MADE IN FRANCE

By H C-BUNNER-

lllastr^teci by

C-J -Taylor.

PUCKS-MULBERRY-SERIBS

-MADE IN FRANCE."

Under the title of " Made in France"
H. C. Bunner has gathered a number of
short stories, all founded on tales by De
Maupassant. Several have suffered so great
a sea change, however, that the original
writer, if he were alive, would not recognize
them. In these about all that Bunner has
borrowed from the brilliant Frenchman is
what he calls the "ethical situations." Others
bear evident traces of their French origin.
Mr. Bunner explains the motive of his novel
scheme in these words :

" I have selected a few ethical situations from among
the brightest of Maupassant's inventions, and have tried
to reproduce them, not as translations, but as English or
American stories based on a Frenchman's inspiration, and
I have done this with the sole hope of making that in
spiration clear to people who will not or can not read
Maupassant in the original. If through the new climes,
the new times, the new changes, the new worlds, indeed,
into which I have moved his people and their adventures,
you catch a better glimpse of the best fancies of M. Guy
de Maupassant than you can get through the misleading
mechanism of a literal translation, I shall be glad, indeed."

There is no question of his success, for
nine out of ten of his readers would find De
Maupassant less amusing than Bunner. The
volume is very cleverly illustrated by Taylor.

— San Francisco Chronicle,
hi Hoards, $1.00. In Paper, jo cents.

All Booksellers.
P,y Mail, from the Publishers, on. Receipt of Price.

-THE RUNAWAY BROWNS,"

by H. C. Bunner, illustrations by C. J. Tay
lor ; publishers, Keppler & Schwarzmann.
The experiences of Paul Brown and his wife,
who escape a tame, adventureless life, with a
view of having " things happen to them,"
and to this end leave a pleasant home to be
gone a year and a day, are just the reading
for a Summer's afternoon, and there is still
enough of Summer in the air to make it en
joyable to its fullest. How the Browns fell
in with a band of barn-storming profession
als ; how they became tin peddlers ; how
they took charge of a lone hotel, and how
they finally and gladly reached their trim
cottage, is told in these clever and amusing
pages, and will bring more than one hearty
laugh even from those unused to smile.

— N., P. &• S. Bulletin.

In Boards, $1.00. In Paper, 50 Cents.

All Booksellers.
By Mail, from the Publishers, on receipt of price.

" IN THE '400' AND OUT."

By Charles Jay Taylor, New York:
Keppler & Schwarzmann, $1.00.

The "Taylor-made" girl is the hero
ine of this pictorial travesty, whose pages
have been selected from the weekly num
bers of PUCK. Echoes from Newport and
the " Pier," from Tuxedo and Fifth Avenue,
make up the sum of these facile sketches
of the occupations and amusements that
round out a society existence. The pict
ures are classified as the comedy " In" the
" 400," and the farce " Out." The designs
are generally amusing, and exhibit a high
degree of artistic excellence.

—Philadelphia Public Ledger.

For sale by all Booksellers.
By mail from the publishers on receipt of price.

When the Publishers of PUCK decided
to issue

PUCK'S PAINTING BOOK

FOR CHILDREN,

they had no idea how popular that book
would become, and how much it would be
prized by the young folks.

The Author- Artist of PUCK'S PAINTING
BOOK, Mr. Frederick B. Opper, seeing that
nearly all of the painting books heretofore
published were not what they ought to be,
and that such books should be adapted to
juvenile capabilities and be instructing and
entertaining, has given us here a series of
simple, clear and funny pictures, the colors
of which any child can mix and copy.

PUCK'S PAINTING BOOK consists of 48
pages, printed in six colors; bound in a
strong varnished cover. Price, 5o Cents.
For sale by all Booksellers, at THE PUCK
BUILDING, WORLD'S FAIR GROUNDS, CHI
CAGO, as well as at the office of PUCK.
New York. Sent by mail.

"MADE IN FRANCE/

BE R THINE*

Copyright, 1893, by KEPPLHR & SCHVVARZMANN.

TO
A. L. P

925727

Contents.

Page.

By Way of Explanation i

Tony -. 8

The Prize of Propriety 24

Dennis 42

The Minuet 60

A Pint 's a Pound 76

A Capture 94

Uncle Atticus 118

The Pettibone 'Brolly 140

The Joke on M. Peptonneau 162

Father Dominick's Convert. . ... 180

BY WAY OF EXPLANATION.

BY WAY OF EXPLANATION.

CT • •"jfl^rTr>\

^f

•i i gj — !aiQ borrow a hint from an old Italian
1 phrase, even the best of trans-
^ lators can not help it if he, to
^ some extent, traduces as well as
introduces. The more faithful he
is, the more absolute and direct in
his rendering, the more danger he runs
of being "falsely true" to an original style whose
chief charm must lie in the freedom and untram-
meled ease with which a literary artist handles
his native language.

No foreign author of our day has suffered
more at the hands of his translators than M. Guy
de Maupassant. Occasionally he has met with
a friend, such as Mr. Jonathan Sturgis, who has
treated him with honor and with loving kind
ness; but, alas! Mr. Sturgis selected for trans
lation but a baker's dozen of M. de Maupassant's
stories out of more than that number of the
French author's books. For the most part, it
has been his luck to fall into the hands of hard
working but distinctly unliterary people, who have
wronged him as faithfully as only the literal-
minded can wrong the fanciful and imaginative.

V "ITTabc in franco." V

The qualities that put M. Guy de Mau
passant's work out of the scope of translation
are inherent in his genius; and two in particu
lar have served to withhold a fair knowledge of
his power from those who have read him only
in English versions.

In the first place, Maupassant, broadly popu
lar as he has proved himself, never hesitates to
assume the absolutely Thackerayan attitude of
talking to that man in the company who knows
the most. Simple and direct in his speech almost
beyond any writer of his day and of his race, he
yet, at all times, claims the right to presuppose, in
the audience to which he addresses himself, a
liberal allowance of intelligence, of knowledge of
the world, and of breadth of mind. He has, for a
Frenchman, few mannerisms; no euphuisms what
ever; no tenuous, wire-drawn subtleties of phrase.
But he demands that you shall have your brains
about you when you are listening to him, and
that you shall have employed your brains to some
purpose before you met him. He has no time to
talk to the dull, the inattentive or the narrow-
minded. And yet, while he certainly requires of
his hearer a deal of mental alertness, no small
fund of general information, and a broad and far-
reaching human sympathy, I do not recall in all
his work a single passage where he asks more of
his reader in the way of knowledge or understand
ing than any ordinarily well-educated and whole
some-minded man or woman may acquire unaided,
and should acquire, in order to read good litera
ture with an intelligent comprehension.

The advantage of assuming the possession
of such brains and knowledge on the part of his

tt)a? of (Explanation. TP

readers is that it makes its return directly to the
writer. It gives to M. de Maupassant a privilege
of which he is not slow to avail himself — akin to
that of the dramatist who has the great happiness
of finding himself able to dispense with his first
act. Hence the marvelous conciseness and direct
ness of his story-telling, which enables Maupassant
to accomplish simply and easily, and with perfect
suitability to his purposes, what Balzac sought to
do with an infinity of labor and trouble of spirit —
to create for himself a literary world of his own in
character and episode.

Unless you have in some other way acquired
a knowledge of the elements which go to make
up the heterogeneous social world of which M. de
Maupassant has written — primarily for those who
know it measurably as well as he himself does —
you can not fairly read certain of his tales without
reading the others that complement them; that
combine to form the complete and perfect repre
sentation of the phase of society which he under
takes to exhibit. You may have to read a half-
dozen of his sketches of peasant life, each one per
fect in itself, before you realize his mastery of the
peasant character and conditions. After that,
each new one that you come across will fill you
with fresh admiration for the breadth and accu
racy of his observation. And what is true of his
peasants is true of all the other types of humanity
that he touches with a master-hand. If he tells
you a story of a soldier, you may feel sure that the
soldier is a soldier because he could not possibly
be anything else and be what he is in the story.
If he lays his scene in a given place at a given
time, you may be sure it is because he has chosen

2 3

y "2rta6e in prance." V

place and time out of the fullness of a trained
artistic knowledge. And if his hero is a Norman,
for instance, you may be sure that, in his own
native phrase, he is not a Norman for nothing.

This peculiarity of Maupassant's work offers
in itself a formidable bar to a fair translation.
We can all easily think of books that paint local
conditions of American life simply and clearly
enough to our eyes, which we yet should find
almost impossible to explain or to illuminate to a
foreigner who had not our knowledge of those
conditions. Thus it is that it is easy to do Mau
passant a wrong in wrenching a given one of his
tales away from the body of his story-telling and
presenting it to the world as a fully-accredited
representative of its whole family.

And when you add to the characteristic of
the writer which I have here endeavored to set
forth, the characteristic of a remarkable suscepti
bility, sensitiveness and sympathetic changeable-
ness of literary style which makes Maupassant in
every instance subtly suit his manner of telling to
the subject matter of his story, I think you will
agree with me that he is ill to translate, at the best.

In this present book I have selected a few
ethical situations from among the brightest of
Maupassant's inventions, and have tried to re
produce them, not as translations, but as English,
or rather American stories based on a French
man's inspiration — and I have done this with
the sole hope of making that inspiration clear to
people who will not or can not read Maupassant
in the original. If through the new climes, the
new times, the new changes, the new worlds,
indeed, into which I have moved his people and

4

"V 33y tDay of (fjcplanation. ^

their adventures, you catch a better glimpse of
the best fancies of M. Guy de Maupassant than
you can get through the misleading mechanism
of a literal translation, I shall be glad, indeed.

The venture may seem somewhat bold, but
it is undertaken in a spirit of sincerest and faith-
fulest admiration for him who — though silenced
now forever in a living death — must always
be, to my thinking, the best of story-tellers since
Boccaccio wrote down the tales he heard from
women's lips.

TONY.

TONY.

DO not translate this story
from M. Guy de Maupas
sant's French, because I can
no more translate the charm
of that French than those
little machines with rolls of
perforated paper can grind out
a tune in the way that Mr. Pade-
r.ewski plays it. Out of respect for the best artist
wiio ever fashioned a short story, I won't make
tiiki attempt; but I will, if you please, take the
bare facts of this little tale, and re-tell in my own
way what he originally told in a way that is very
much better, but that is also French — and so
finely French, too, that you have got to get the
French language right into your bones to feel all
its delicacy and force.

It 's a simple enough tale to tell, so far as
the story goes. It is about a great big, fat, good-
natured, gluttonous, simple-minded inn -keeper
who kept quite a famous little tavern in the town
of Tournevent, in Normandy. Far and wide in
the valley in which it nestles, the tavern, which
bore the sign of "The Friendly Cup," was known
for its honest wine and its marvelous hot-spiced
s

Cony.

dishes — delicious concoctions, but so hot with
pepper and all manner of hot things that they
brought tears to the eyes, and seemed almost to
justify the inn-keeper's assertion that they both
warmed the stomach and cleared the brain.

But Tony himself was almost as much of an
attraction as his wine and his deviled dishes.
He was so fat, to begin with ; he had such a
great round dumpling of a face on top of his
great round pudding of a body ; he looked at you
with such an innocently roguish, yet kindly eye,
that you could not help feeling, when he sat
down at your table and talked to you, as though
you were enjoying the society of a
freak of nature and a comedian
put together, for the paltry
price of a glass of wine.
For Tony had a most de
lightful way of making
fun of people without of
fending them, and you
could make all the fun
of him you pleased with
out disturbing in the least
the unruffled serenity with

which he took life and all that life brought —
fat, for instance, an unquenchable thirst, and a
shrewish wife.

Old Ma'am Tony, as she was called in the
neighborhood, was all that Tony was not — shriv
eled and thin, wrinkled, sour, unblessed with
even the most rudimentary sense of humor, the
most sordid and narrow type of French peasant-
woman, without an appetite in the world, unless
avarice — biting, gnawing, cankering avarice can

V> "itta&e in prance." V

be called an appetite: Ma'am Tony's chief business
in life was the raising of plump chickens for
market, a business in which she was both expert
and successful. Outside of this, her one avo
cation was making herself disagreeable to her
husband. In this business, however, she was
neither expert nor successful ; for, although Ma'am
Tony was far -and -away the most disagreeable
woman in the country-side, and had a manner
of language that would curdle milk, nothing that
she could say or do could disturb the genial,
over-fed placidity of that pleasant mountain of
flesh; and, moreover, even if she had succeeded
in making him as unhappy as he was capable of
being, she felt that his pain would be as nothing
in comparison with the suffering of spirit which his
very existence caused her. The mere thought of
him was an offense to her soul — mainly because
she had such a mean little soul. She hated him
for his fat, which seemed to her miserly mind
a waste and extravagance — something which
somehow might have been reduced to good silver
coin and hoarded away in her old blue woolen
stocking. She hated him for his good nature and
his pleasant humor, which were vanities she could
neither enjoy nor understand. She hated him for
his friends, who were, of course, the idle drinkers
of the village; and she hated him for his ele
phantine capacity for drink, although he never
got drunk and his conviviality served only as a
profitable bait for business. Although each glass
he drank sold two more, Ma'am Tony could
never bring herself to see that it was only one
way of turning over capital, and a bitter rage
burned in her heart as she saw the good red wine

^ (Tony ^

go down that enormous gullet and feed his burst
ing veins of red and purple. She scolded in lan
guage too hideous for transcription. He laughed
until his fat cheeks swallowed up his eyes, and
guyed her with great coarse, hearty, good-natured
jokes, which his boon companions greeted with

roars of merriment, although the jokes were the
same day after day.

"You wait!" his wife would shriek, her
throat husky and dry with scolding; "you wait,
you puff-ball ! You '11 burst some day ; you '11
burst like a bladder! You 're a wind-bag, you
are — you 're no man ! "

" Good solid meat, old woman ; good solid
meat," Tony would chuckle; and then, baring an
arm as big as a trooper's thigh, he would hit it
a resounding slap and shout : " Put some of that
on your blamed old poultry ! How 's that for a
chicken-wing, hey ? "

The tavern roysterers pounded the table in
their delight, and the old woman would back off
to her poultry-yard, furiously sputtering with the
last remains of her breath :

" You '11 burst, you beast ! "

//

V "tflab* in prance." V

Tony did not burst; but something else hap
pened to him that was almost as horrible in its
way. A stroke of paralysis rendered his huge
form as helpless as an overturned turtle. They
put him to bed in a little closet next to the public
room of "The Friendly Cup," and it was not
many days before all the town knew that Tony
would never more move the gigantic legs that
had been his pride and the jest of the neighbor
hood. Inert, struck with the immobility of a
living death, yet clear of mind and lusty of appe
tite as of old, this huge hulk lay in a narrow
bunk-like bed that was made afresh but once in
the week, on Saturday afternoon, when four sturdy
laboring-men lifted him by the arms and legs.

It was Tony still, but Tony with a difference
— Tony helpless and afraid, before the she-devil
of a wife with whom his fate was cast — the same
fun-loving, thirsty Tony, now compelled to listen
in abasement to her vile abuse, and to be the
patient and uncomplaining victim of her incredi
ble meanness and stinginess. She cut him down
to an ordinary man's allowance of wine, and she
counted every spoonful of food she put into his
mouth ; and while she fed him she taunted him
with his utter uselessness.

Yet he was content enough - when she would
let him alone lying in his little bed, making from
time to time one of the few motions that was left
to him — a slight shifting of his ponderous body
to the right or to the left — and listening to catch
through the partition the sound of familiar voices
in the tavern room.

" Hi, Pierre!" he would shout; "that you?"

And Pierre would answer :

V* (Cony. TP

"Aye, aye, old man; how are you getting
along?"

" Oh, I 'm settling down, settling down,"
Tony would reply, cheerily.

" Losing any flesh ? "

" Not a pound! I 'm making."

And, indeed, in spite of his meagre diet and
the seasoning it got from Ma'am Tony's impre
cations, the great creature was actually increasing
in flesh.

After a while he began to have more com
panionship. First it was a young rooster that
came from the poultry-yard and sat upon the
window-sill and crowed. Then some little chick
ens got into a way of wandering in through the
open door to pick up crumbs of bread near his
bedside, and he took great pleasure in their little

weakling peeps and their funny little aimless
flights. Then his old friends began to drop in
and chat with him, finding his wit as fresh as of
yore, and Tony learned what it is to be a pro
fessional funny man ; for his entertainment of his
friends was the price of their society, and his

V "IH^c in prance." V

humor was his sole stock-in-trade. They played
backgammon among themselves, and surrepti
tiously treated him to his own wine. But there
were days when his wife, passing by and casting
her eyes upon this picture of simple contentment,
would be seized with an unspeakable rage, and
would knock the backgammon board into the air,
and drive his cronies .out-of-doors at the point of
her tongue. Then she would tell her husband
that he was a good-for-nothing and expensive
beast, and go grumbling back to her poultry-yard.

Of Tony's three closest companions, the
long cabinet-maker, the little apothecary, and
the crooked watchmaker, only the third dared
to stand up against the rages of Ma'am Tony.
He was an untamed and fearless bachelor, with
a spirit of deviltry in him as curiously warped and
crooked as his physical frame. Prosper Hors-
laville was his name, and he was the acknowl
edged leader and chief of the trio. He did not
hesitate to chaff Ma'am Tony to her face, and to
make her literal dullness the butt of his ingenious
malice.

" See here," he said to the old woman one
day, when she had more viciously than usual be
wailed her hard lot in having to take care of what
she called her paralyzed pig; "see here," he said;
" do you know what I 'd do with that old man of
yours if I had him ? There he is lying in bed all
day doing nothing, and as hot as a furnace. Why
don't you make him hatch eggs ? "

Ma'am Tony stared at him, uncertain whether
or no he were making fun of her.

" That 's what I 'd do," went on Prosper,
without the slightest movement of his facial mus-
14

^ Cony,

cles that could detract from his aspect of perfect
seriousness ; " I 'd make him hatch eggs. Now,
you take a setting of eggs the same day that you
set a hen, and put half-a-dozen alongside of him,
under one arm, and half-a-dozen alongside of him,
under the other; and then, when the chickens
hatch out, you may just give 'em to the hen.
She can just as well take care of two broods
as one."

A light of sordid speculation began to glitter
in the old woman's eyes.

"Do you think it could be done?" she
asked, thoughtfully.

" Could be done ? Why, certainly. If you
can hatch out eggs in a box with a lamp, you can
hatch 'em out easy enough in a bed. Make the
old man earn his living."

A week later Ma'am Tony entered her hus
band's room with an apron full of eggs.

" I set the yellow hen to-day," said she, « on
twelve eggs, and here 's twelve for you. Now,
see you don't break 'em."

in prance." V

Tony stared at her in astonishment and
affright.

" What — what — what do you mean ? " he
stammered.

"I 'm going to set you, you good-for-
nothing ! "

At first he merely laughed, for he could not
believe her. Then, when he realized that she was
in earnest, he remonstrated against the indignity
that she offered him, growing as angry as it was
in him to be, and showing the sulky petulance
of an offended child. He rolled his great body
from right to left, and positively refused to per
form the functions of a hen.

"All right," said his wife, dryly; "no eggs,
no dinner! Not a bite or sup but bread and
water do you get until you hatch those eggs."

Noon-time came, and the steam of Tony's
favorite soup spread its perfume upon the air, rich
with spicy, enticing hints of garlic, bay-leaf, sage
and tarragon. By his side were a crust of stale
bread and a cup of water. In the kitchen hard
by, Ma'am Tony moved about preparing the
dinner, silent, obdurate, deaf to his remonstrances
and entreaties. Tony held out until he heard the
grit of her chair upon the floor and the clink of
her spoon in the soup-plate; then he succumbed,
sold his manhood for a mess of pottage, and
became a human hen.

In the afternoon his companions looked in
as usual.

" You don't seem to be lying right com
fortable," said crooked Prosper, casting an ob
servant eye upon him.

" No," said Tony ; « I 'm a bit stiff to-day."

^ Conr V"

« Rheumatics?"

" Something like it," assented Tony, uneasily.

" Let me give you a rub down," suggested
Prosper, pleasantly, advancing a horny hand.

" No, no," cried Tony, and in a nervous
agony of dread he drew away, half rolling over.

There was a faint sound of crushing shells,
and as the preliminaries for an omelette declared
themselves under his left side, Tony cried out
impulsively and unguardedly :

" Oh, my ! Now I Ve done it ! "

His wife heard him and rushed into the
room. In her first fit of rage she broke the back
gammon board over his head, and then, further
maddened by this catastrophe, she fell upon him
and beat him with her skinny hands until her

withered muscles could no longer act, while Tony
lay helpless, motionless beneath her blows, for
fear of breaking the six eggs that yet remained

with him.

*
# #

The era of henhood had set in for Tony;
his life was now given over to hatching. Rigid
n

V "iltabc in prance." V

and still he lay, stretched upon his back; his
eyes fixed upon the ceiling, breathing softly and
even speaking low, as though he were afraid of
prematurely waking his little charges. Once he
broke an egg, and that day he had no dinner.

This was unnecessarily severe punishment:
the pangs of conscience troubled Tony quite
enough. For he had begun to take a strange
interest in his new occupation; and before long
he was even a little jealous of the yellow hen,
who was setting out in the barnyard; and was
much rejoiced when she in her turn stepped
through an egg. Tony's lot in life was now
humble, it is true, but in some respects it was
happier than before. He now received from his
wife the consideration due to a setting hen, and
he was better and more abundantly fed. More
over, he succeeded in obtaining a double allow
ance of wine, on the ground that wine was heating.

To some extent he resumed his old position
as an attraction to custom. The news of his new
field of usefulness spread far and wide, and people
came from everywhere to make the purchase of a
drink an excuse for a peep at the colossus of eggs,
as Prosper now christened him. They came into
the room on tip-toe, as you enter the chamber of
sickness, and asked after his health in whispers,
to which he responded with the patient but
reassuring smile of an invalid who does not wish
to waste his strength in speech.

One day his wife came in to tell him that
the yellow hen had begun to hatch out. She had
three little chickens already. A thrill of delight
ful anxiety ran through Tony's frame. How many
would he have ?

28

V Cony. IP

" I *m doing my best," he whispered meekly
to his wife; but she turned her back on him
scornfully.

" You never were any good," she said.

But Tony was not long behind his feathered
rival. Just about supper time, a little faint, far
away sound of tapping caused Tony to cry aloud
in uncontrollable glee. The news began to spread
instantly. It went from house to house like wild
fire. In five minutes the streets of Tournevent
were full of people hurrying to the tavern, and
in a short time the one public room was crowded
with excited drinkers, chattering, laughing, and
betting bottles of wine and glasses of brandy on
the relative success of Tony and the yellow hen.

It was just six o'clock when the expected
announcement made a hush fall upon the house.
As many as could get in Tony's little room pushed
silently in. Others poked their heads in at the
doors and windows, or stood on chairs to look
over the heads of those in front. With infinite

"

lllabe in prance." T'

precautions Ma'am Tony drew from under the
arm of the big man a tiny, downy little ball of
yellow and black, that uttered a feeble and plain
tive "peep!" Tears of joy and relief coursed
down Tony's fat cheeks as his first chicken was
gently passed from hand to hand, and examined
and admired as though it were some rare curi
osity.

As time passed on, inquiries and reports
went forward and back between the throng in
the public room and the watchers in the little
chamber.

" How many is it now ?"

" This one makes six."

Then arose a sound of laughter and applause
and the clinking of glasses. Ma'am Tony pushed
her way out into the yard, and delivered the six
new arrivals to the yellow hen, who clucked a
hearty maternal welcome, and spread her broad
wings as though she were quite ready to give
shelter to all the little chickens in the world. It
was a beautiful April evening. The soft warm air
hardly stirred. A tender twilight haze lent ghostly
vagueness to the faint tints of the young vegeta
tion. At the far end of the poultry-yard a young
cockerel, alarmed by the distant noise of the ap
plauding crowd, crowed defiantly.

The evening bells began to ring. " Seven ! "
announced Tony; "in my right elbow."

But a greater triumph awaited him. Four
had hatched out at once, and as the last one
was lifted to the air Tony kissed it passionately
and almost devoured it with his beaming eyes.

" Let me have it," he pleaded with his wife;
" I '11 be so careful of it ! "

V- Cony. V-

But the old woman was stony-hearted. She
bore the chicken away to its foster-mother; and
then, returning, drove the crowd out of Tony's
room, and, shutting the door on him, left him to
rest, exhausted, but triumphant, proud and happy.

For a long time the crowd lingered in the
public room, discussing the nine — or rather,
twenty-one — days' wonder,
and it was past midnight when
Ma'am Tony finally closed
her doors. A belated passer
by accosted Prosper Horsla-
ville, who was the last to
leave.

"How is Tony now?"
inquired the citizen, pointing
with his thumb to where the sign of " The Friend
ly Cup" hung, silvered in the moonlight.

"As well as could be expected."

THE PRIZE OF PROPRIETY.

THE PRIZE OF PROPRIETY.

story of the Prize of Propri
ety was told in an old French
town, by an old French doctor,
a plump little man with rosy
cheeks and short bristling gray
hair standing up straight all
over his head, and a short brist
ling gray beard standing out straight
all around his face. He had a perpetual twinkle
in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth looked
as though they would like to wink. He sat on
the parapet, that was built in the time of Julius
Caesar, and told the story with countless grimaces,
and with a Frenchman's artistic enjoyment of his
own recital. It was a town that had been famous
many centuries ago, and that has since been
many centuries forgotten. Its narrow streets ran
between tall, old-fashioned stone houses, and
twisted this way and that, up and down incredi
ble grades, following necessities of an antiquity
past comprehending.

The sunlight glinted on the swift little blue
river that ran under the arches of the old stone
bridge; here and there, over the high garden
walls that bordered it, showed the top of a blos-

V Cfye PC W of Propriety. ^

soming pear-tree, or a spray of peach, reaching
up into the free air, and the soft Spring breeze
brought on its breast a faint smell of lilacs and
new grass and upturned mould.

And this is the story of the Prize of Pro
priety, given once on a time by Madame Husson.

" You would hardly think," began the
Doctor, "that we inhabitants of this little town of
Gisors, who still talk of the glories of our city in
the days of the Romans ; of its present superiority
to the rival city of Gournay, at the other end of
the valley; and who to this very day discuss and
experiment with mediaeval receipts for cooking
eggs and making pasties — you would not believe
that we had ever been accused of being a frivol
ous and ill-conducted populace.

"Yet such we were in the sight of Mine.
Husson, a very rich and very respectable middle-
aged lady who once dwelt among us many years

•y "UTabe in prance." V

ago. When I tell you that Mme. Husson was
the only child of an old couple who had success
fully conducted a young ladies' institute for
English Misses, that she had in her first youth
married a consumptive drawing-master who had
expired after six months of marital life ; and that
his widow had spent the twenty-five years that
had elapsed since that date in one long series of
religious exercises in memory of the defunct, you
will understand that Mme. Husson was not of the
world worldly. She took, however, a kindly, if
somewhat narrow, interest in her fellow-beings,
and at the time when she settled in Gisors, she
had come into possession of her parents' consider
able fortune, and had reached the charitable
stage, where she was anxious to do great things
with her money; and to do them, moreover, in
the fussy way that middle-aged ladies delight in.

"Now, I can not tell you, for I have forgot
ten, if I ever knew, in what chaste bower, in what
secluded retreat of innocence, Mme. Husson had
spent the twenty-five years of her widowhood;
but I know that the good people of Gisors im
pressed her as being reckless and shameless in
their public manners, to the verge of apparent
profligacy. Our simple, hearty, noisy, Norman
ways; our Middle-Age phrases, a little too strong
and racy for the modern taste ; our big appetites
and our big talk all shocked and offended her,
and made her regard us as gross and sensual
people of questionable morals, at the very best.

" Most of all, it horrified her to look out
of her window upon the public market-place and
see the market-women, the farm- girls, the dairy
maids and the daughters of the peasantry jostling

each other, laughing, shrieking, chaffing, scolding
and quarreling in their rough jovial way; and
when two great strapping wenches would come
to blows and exchange a few harmless love-taps,
with their big, bare red arms flying through the
air, Mme. Husson would close her shutters and
send her maid, Joconde, for the sal volatile.

" It was not, therefore, much wondered at in
Gisors when it was announced that Mme. Husson
had decided to offer a prize of virtue to the young
woman bearing the best character in the town, to
present that happy paragon with a rosy wreath
and a purse of gold ; in fact, to establish here the
whole institution of the rosiere with its attendant
festivities. And as this simply meant that the
town was to feed itself at the expense of its bene
factress, joy, gratitude and satisfaction ran high in
Gisors.

** But as time went on, and no further steps
were taken in the matter, the people began to
grow curious and suspicious; and inquiries were
made, which shortly proved that Joconde, the
maid, was at the bottom of the strange delay.
97

V "2Habc tit prance." V

" This Joconde most notably belied her
name. She was a sour - visaged spinster, even
more of a rigid, uncompromising, narrow-minded
moralist than was her mistress. In her eyes
there were just two absolutely untainted and
faultless females in the whole world — Mme.
Husson and herself — and it behooved even
them to be careful and to walk straightly. To
Joconde had been entrusted the task of making
inquiry into the reputation of the local damsels,
and she had performed her duties with absolutely
fanatical zeal. Her standard was of course of
the loftiest. She demanded decorum, modesty
of bearing, and absolute propriety in the smallest
details of speech and conduct — qualities not
often to be found among a lot of hard-working,
honest, ignorant, rough-living daughters of pov
erty. Joconde inquired everywhere, caught up
every bit of gossip, every vague suspicion, every

malicious hint, and noted all down in the little
memorandum-book in which -she inscribed the
articles of her day's marketing. "Here," saicj the

^ (Efye pri3c of Propriety. ^

Doctor, opening a capacious wallet, "is a copy
of a page of that famous memorandum-book
which I have carried with me these many years : "

bread 4 sous

milk i pt. 2 "

Butter 8 ' '

Malvina Levesque got herself Talked about last year.

tickling the butter mans Boy in the ribs done it.

chops i franc

salt 2 sous

Rosalie Vatinel called Fran^oise Pienoir a vile language
Radishes i sous

vinegar 2 sous

Josephine Dardent aint had nothing said only she gets

Letters from the young Alan was turned out of the Pickle Shop

last spring.

" Every entry like one of these settled the
fate of a victim. And as there was no girl what
ever about whom some one had not, at some time,
said some unkind thing, it very soon became
obvious that Gisors could not furnish a young
woman up to the wonderful standard of propriety
exacted by Mme. Husson and her maid. The
surrounding towns were ransacked with no better
success.

"And one morning Joconde said to her
mistress :

" < Madame, if any one is to get that prize,
Isidore is the only one who deserves it — and
he 's a man — leastways a boy. He never done,
nor said, nor thought anything improper in all
his whole life, I '11 be bound.'

" Madame Husson pondered long over this

curious suggestion. There was no doubt about

Isidore's qualifications, save in the matter of sex.

He was a great, pale, gawky boy of twenty,

29

<V "iHabe in prance." IT

whose mother kept a fruit-stand in the market
place. Isidore's invincible, positively morbid
bashfulness had made him in a way the butt of
the town. He had passed his youth at his
mother's apron - strings, and he had no com
panions of his own age, even among the boys
with whom he had grown up. The sight of a
girl was enough to suffuse his face with painful
blushes and to paralyze his never - too - ready
tongue. His sensitive and shrinking delicacy
of speech and behavior, at an age when most
boys do their best to be taken for little monsters
of vulgarity and iniquity, had attracted the atten
tion of all the town's-people. You see, Gisors is,
after all, not a very large place The conse
quence was that Isidore was known among the
coarse-spoken town's-folk of the baser sort as a
milk -sop and goody-goody, and was made an
object of general persecution. The girls laughed
and winked at him; the boys hailed him with
broad jests as he sat behind the piles of fruit
in his mother's little shop. Isidore blushed and
bore it.

"Mme. Husson could not make up her
mind. A rosy wreath for the head of a young
man was a developement of her plans that she
had not contemplated. And yet, if she rejected
Isidore, all her great dream for doing good and
setting depraved Gisors a virtuous example must
go for nothing. She consulted her Father-Con
fessor.

" < Why, my dear Madame,' said that good

gentleman, thinking it over with the assistance of

a pinch of snuff, 'I see* nothing out of the way in

the idea. Propriety knows no sex, or rather it

3°

may be an attribute of either sex. Certainly no
human being was ever more proper than Isidore.
Why, I don't believe the boy has ever drunk any
thing stronger than milk in his life; and he can
not be accused of setting a bad example to the
rest of our young people.'

"That decided Mme. Husson. She called
on the Maire of Gisors, and that functionary
highly approved. Show me the municipal func
tionary who does not highly approve of giving
the tax-payers a right good holiday and festival
— when it does n't cost the town anything.

" ' We '11 make a great occasion of it, of
course,' he said. 'We '11 decorate the public
square ; and, yes, we '11 have the military out, and
get up a procession.'

"They fixed the date of the ceremony for the
1 5th of August as being at once the festival of the
Virgin Mary and of the Emperor Napoleon.
31

^ "2Habe in prance." *V

"When Isidore was consulted about it, he
blushed and appeared pleased.

" Well might he be pleased ! It was. his hour
of triumph. The girls who had laughed at him,
the boys who had jeered him, found the tables
turned upon them. It is all very well to laugh at
a fellow for a milk-sop and a goody-goody, but
when milk-soppery and goody-goodiness bring a
fellow in five hundred francs, a savings-bank-book,
a gold watch, a public dinner, municipal and
military honors, and a large increase in the fel
low's mother's fruit trade, why, a fellow is neither
to be laughed at nor sneezed at, even if he does
happen to be a little straight-laced.

"It was the i5th of August. The long main
street leading to the market-place of Gisors was
hung with banners and draperies its whole length.
In the market-place itself were spread the long
gayly-decked tables for the general collation, —
their snowy covering contrasting bravely with the
crimson-striped awnings and other canopies that
stretched above them, supported by painted and
gilded flag-poles that bore streaming bannerets
high in the Summer air. With a thunder of
martial music, the Gisors Grenadiers swept into
the square.

"Dividing the great crowd that had already
gathered, the military pride of Gisors marched on,
flags flying and drums beating; drew up before
the humble shop of Isidore's mother, and pre
sented arms as Isidore appeared at the portal.
He was dressed from head to foot in spotless,

immaculate white, with a bunch of orange-blos
soms in his white straw hat.

"With the Maire of the town on one side
and Mme. Husson radiant, trembling with excite
ment, on the other, Isidore advanced and took his
place in the procession. Amid the cheers of the
populace, following the rolling music of the
Grenadier band, they moved onward toward the
cathedral. In front of Isidore a detachment of
very little girls indeed strewed flowers in his path
way — white, chaste, virginal flowers. Isidore
marched on with a happy smile upon his pale
innocent face, and the crowd cheered again and
again.

"There were brief services at the cathedral,
and a touching address by the officiating cleric;
and then the procession, returning to the market
place, took seats at the tables under the canopies.

" Before the collation began, the Maire made
his address. It was dignified and imposing.

33

V "Jttabe in prance.1* V

" « The honor that your benefactress and
your town extend to you, young man, is also, in
some sense, an obligation upon you. In the face
of this vast multitude who have met to acclaim
your triumph as an example of virtue, propriety
and decorum, you must be considered to have
taken upon yourself a high and sacred engage
ment to keep that bright example shining in
undiminished purity and splendor before the eyes
of this community, from now even unto your
latest day.'

" Then, stepping solemnly forward, he press
ed the young man to his bosom, and sat the
wreath of roses on his head; and Isidore sobbed,
sobbed with a vague, innocent, ignorant joy and
pride. Then the Maire put into his hands the
silken purse that contained his five hundred
francs in gold, his savings-bank- book, his gold
watch, and the freedom of the town of Gisors,
enclosed in a silver casket. The last gifts had
been purchased by popular subscription.

" The repast was magnificent, too magnifi
cent. It was a repast of the true Norman style,
with countless dishes and immense portions; and
we gulped it down in good Norman style, float
ing it on its way in floods of rich golden cider
and generous red wine, while the glasses clinked,
the plates clashed, the knives and forks rattled,
and the Grenadier band poured forth its music
all the time that it was not eating or drinking
— which, indeed, was no inconsiderable time,
for we sat at those tables from high noon until
the soft warm evening's mist came rolling up our
narrow streets from the low pasture lands about
the town, bringing with them a pleasant country

34

V (Efc prise of Propriety. V

smell and faint, far-off sounds of tinkling bells
and lowing cattle.

"And then we took Isidore home. Poor
boy ; no one seemed to have noticed that this
child of temperance and frugality had been eat
ing all the day as he had never eaten before —
since never before had he seen such viands — and,
moreover, drinking n\\ day, as unquestionably he
had never drunk before — a glass of wine having,
probably, been a rare and extreme indulgence
with him. And there he sat from twelve to from
six to seven, and with one or another of the
thoughtless, excited, warm-hearted, heavy drink
ers about him, poor Isidore had drunk every one
of the score of toasts with which the banquet
concluded — and heaven knows how much more
beside.

"Still, the nervous excitement of the occa
sion kept him up ; and save for the glitter of his
eyes and the color in his cheek he seemed to
those who marched with him to that little fruit-
shop to be quite his usual, undemonstrative, silent
self. His mother was not yet come home; a
little band of friends was accompanying her from
house to house to show her son's wreath and to
receive the congratulations of her neighbors.
There was also a plan on foot to close the festivi
ties with a grand serenade to Mme. Husson. So
it happened that Isidore was somewhat uncere
moniously deposited in the darkened shop while
the unsatisfied merry-makers of his guard-of-honor
hurried on to the next excitement.

"So Isidore was left alone in the dim half-
darkness of the shop. A little light filtered in
through the cracks of the door, enough to show

4 JJ

V "^ttabc in prance." V

him the heaping baskets of peaches, the melons
piled on the floor, and the late Summer fruits
spread out in attractive order on the shelves and
counters. The smell of them mingled in that
small warm room in one musky, intoxicating odor.
It mounted to the boy's brain as he sat there and

drew labored breaths of the close, rich, enervating
air. He felt the clean cold cover of his bank
book, he twirled his watch in his hand, and its
bright surface caught the light from a shutter-
chink. As he dropped his chain it fell with a
pleasant musical sound upon his silver box. But
he must have sat longest of all playing with the
purse of gold, and making its bright orange
stream ripple beneath the silken meshes, as he
softly cascaded it from hand to hand.

"For then and there in the darkness the
Devil seized upon him and rent him. How long

V <Tf?e Prise of propriety. V

the struggle between his good and bad angels
may have been no man may know; nor what
agony of spirit worked within him in the musky
depths of the close little fruit-shop. But when
his mother returned to greet her boy, he was gone
and had left no trace behind him — not even one
orange flower from his white straw hat.

"She hurried to the house of Mme. Husson,
and with Joconde to help them through the
crowds that still surged aimlessly about the streets,
they went to find the Maire. He could give them
no information, however, nor could the officers
of the police. The news got out, and within an
hour the whole town was looking for Isidore,
with the extravagant animation of people who
take their first delightful taste of a mystery. A
general alarm was sent out. The Colonel of the
Grenadiers despatched scouting-parties to make
the external circuit of the town. One of these
discovered on the Paris road the spray of orange-
blossoms. For the rest of the night, half of the
inhabitants of Gisors sat up comparing conjec
tures with each other, and discussing the possibil
ities of the young man's having met with foul
play.

"On the evening of the next day, when the
regular stage-coach got in on its return from
Paris, the people of Gisors learned the truth.
Isidore had hailed the conveyance a mile out of
town, had paid his fare out of his purse of gold,
and, traveling all night, had reached Paris in the
morning; and had got off and disappeared in the

37

^ "iltabe in prance." V

streets of the great city as though it were the
most natural place in the world for a man in a
wrhite, spotless suit of duck.

"The authorities tried their best, but they
could get no further trace of the boy.
Weeks passed on and nothing occurred
to shed the slightest light upon the
mystery.

" I was then the youngest physician
in town, and I happened to be the only
person stirring in the street early one
Fall morning. As I entered the market
place, I suddenly saw a curious dark-
gray figure, in its gait and carriage more
like a baboon than a man, come staggering around
a distant corner. It fell even as I saw it, and I
hurried forward. Reaching the inanimate form,
I tried to lift it. It was a man sunk in the depths
of a profound alcoholic stupor, with an empty
brandy bottle clutched in his hand ; but it was
some time before I realized that the bloated, swol
len, bruised, besmirched face belonged to Isidore.
The beautiful white duck suit was a hideous skele
ton of filthy rags; and the whole creature, dress
and person, was a mass of filth, soilure and dis
figurement, marked with every stain and spot that
can be left on a man by the inexpressible foul
ness of a great city's lowest slums. I called for
help and got him home to his mother's. He was
washed, healed, fed, and set upright again, and
given another chance to behave himself. He had
nothing with him — absolutely nothing of all his
3*

V (Tfyc Pri3c of Propriety. V

gold and silver — except the freedom of the town,
no longer in its silver casket, but tucked away,
dirty itself, in a dirtier pocket.

"We suspected, however, that he had some
small portion of his money hidden somewhere
outside the city limits, for 'when, a few days after
ward, he escaped from his mother's vigilance and
got outside the town, he came back shortly,
drunk, and with money enough in his pocket to
get still more drunk — in tact, to go on such a
spree as no mortal man had ever yet gone on in
the streets of Gisors. A month later he repeated

this performance, and breaking of windows was
the smallest irregularity he committed. This oc
curred again from time to time, until the city
officials, having exhausted all the minor punish
ments they could bestow on him, ordered him to

3.9

<V "2TTa6e in prance." T*

leave the town. It was then that Isidore marched
into the council-chamber and produced the free
dom of the town that had been given him with
his prize of propriety — and asked the munici
pality of Gisors what action it proposed to take
in the matter.

"He remained the town drunkard until he
died," concluded the little doctor, getting down
off the parapet of the bridge; "and when I
closed his eyes the town paid my bill."

DENNIS.

DENNIS.

R. PESSELS, the retired apothecary, as he
called himself, — the tired apothecary as
his friends sometimes called him, in a
way of good-natured jest — lived to
suit his own quiet taste some distance

out of the village, in fact half way up the
mountain-side, in the third stone house on the
hill road, the only one on the second turn. And
as the road did not go over the mountain, but
stopped at the old quarry a quarter of a mile fur
ther on, Dr. Pessels practically did live, as his
more gregarious acquaintances in the little town
liked to put it, "at the end of all things."

But that was just exactly what suited Dr.
Pessels. Life had always been too bustling and
bothersome a business for him — even life in the
calm little, out-of-the-way, up-country town where
for many years he had combined the functions of a
sort of half-doctor with those of a sort of druggist-
and-a-half, to say nothing (and indeed he said as
little as he could about it) of doing nearly any
thing in the veterinary line which happened to
come in his way. To explain the peculiar divi
sion of Dr. Pessels's activity I should say that the
doctor had but a courtesy claim to his title. In
42

V X>ennis. 'V

his youth he had spent a couple of years at a
medical college, but he had never taken his
diploma, having come to the conclusion, at the
end of that time, that it was altogether too much
trouble. They say lazy folk take the most pains.
Certainly the saying came true in Dr. Pessels's
case. Fate shaped matters for him with such
ingenious irony that, before his classmates had
finished walking the hospitals, he found himself a
hard-working apothecary in a remote country
town, not only obliged to take upon his shoulders
the duties of a physician in all except the severest
cases of illness, when a "real doctor" had to be
summoned from the court-house town ten miles
away; but forced to eke out his living by pre
scribing for ailing live-stock, and by adding to
his legitimate drug business the manufacture of
all sorts of nostrums demanded by the curious
old-fashioned taste of his out-of-the-world neigh
borhood. From receipts of the last century,
founded, he sometimes used to think, on traditions
of the middle ages, he compounded, late of nights
and early of mornings, all sorts of eye-waters,
salves, complexion - washes, pomades, possets,
balms, plaisters (the people would n't have them
unless the labels were spelled that way) liniments,
herb-teas and all the other messes in which old-
fashioned country-folk delight.

For fifteen years did Dr. Pessels toil thus in
his grimy little shop, condemned to perpetual
industry — he who asked nothing of the world
but to live and be lazy. And then one of his
messes worked a miracle for him, and gave him
the desire of his heart. He invented or evolved
or discovered Pessels's Panacea Gargle for Man,

43

T' "ilTa&e in prance." *P

Woman and Brute, and therewith he made his
fortune. You have probably never heard of the
Gargle. That is because, like many other reme
dies of its sort, it has what the botanists would
call a habitat — its own
region of country wherein
it is looked upon as a
staple specific, and has no
rival in public affection.
Unknown outside of the
boundaries of a half-dozen
counties, within those limits
the Gargle soon grew to be
as necessary a part of the druggist's stock as
oleum ricini or catnpli. tinct. opii.

There was wealth untold ahead of the doctor
if he wanted it, but he had no use for wealth
untold. He had but one aim in life hencefor
ward: not to do another stroke of work. He
farmed out to a limited number of druggists in
the large towns of his region the right to manu
facture the Gargle on easy royalties; bought him
a house and a large garden as far from the town
as he could get, and settled down to a well-fed
hermit life, with a well-stocked cellar under him
and his man Dennis to keep house for him.

Dennis had been the Doctor's servant, helper
and handy-man for many years. He had helped
the Doctor with his simple surgery and with his
complicated compounds. Now he was gardener,
stableman, cook, butler, bed-maker, messenger,
and valet, and if there was any other office to be
filled about the house Dennis filled it. The
Doctor was lazy, Dennis was industrious; the
Doctor was loquacious, Dennis was taciturn; the
44

IT t)cnnis. V

Doctor was joyous, ambitionless, content; Den
nis's soul was gnawed within him by the thought
of the wasted opportunity to make a fortune out
of the Gargle. It was not that Dennis cared for
anything that the money would bring to him per
sonally, for his wants were meagre in the extreme ;
but the waste offended his thrifty soul, and to
think that others were making the money that his
master might have made was a vexation to his
spirit. Then when the royalties began to fall in
and the Doctor re-let the privileges at whatever
was offered for them, Dennis raged in secret.
He knew that he could dispose of them for twice
what the Doctor was getting, and he could not
understand why the Doctor would not allow him
to act as his agent and wring the last penny out
of the manufacturers. To think that these lessees
were laughing in their sleeves at the fat, good-
natured, easy going little Doctor, was gall and
bitterness to his faithful servitor.

So there was a frown on Dennis's brow one
clear, smart Autumn morning as he handed Dr.
Pessels his mail, and saw the Doctor's face light
up at the sight of a certain large blue envelope.
The lease of the largest of all the firms manufac
turing the Gargle was about to fall in. Dennis
took the privileges of an old domestic ; he waited
while his employer, with a beaming countenance,
read the letter.

" Morton & Pound ? " inquired Dennis,
sourly.

" Yes, Dennis, yes," said the Doctor, cheerily ;
"our old friends."

"Same old terms?" snapped Dennis. Den
nis had never been disrespectful in all his years

45

in franco."

of service, but his tone faintly suggested that
patience was ceasing to be a virtue.

"The same terms," assented the Doctor,
rubbing his hands contentedly; "five thousand
dollars. It 's a great sum, Dennis; as much as
I could expect."

Dennis set his mouth hard.

"The other shop would give you ten, and
be glad to get it," he said.

" Perhaps so, perhaps so," returned the
Doctor, his gayety undimmed; "but it 's worth
making a little less to know whom we 're dealing
with. And they 're old friends, Dennis, good
solid old friends ! "

Dennis emitted a low sound that was some
thing between a groan and a
grunt, and tramped dog-
gedly off to the vege
table garden, where
he dug at the
celery - trenches
with an unneces
sary and expres
sive vigor. The
fat little Doctor
strolled among
his late flowers
and selected with
great care a pink
aster for his button
hole; and finally trotted off, in a sort Oi aimlessly
busy way which he had, to the pretty little town
in the valley below him.

*

40

J)ennts.

The Doctor was a rather more than middle-
aged man, and an old bachelor; he had always
old ways and he lived in an old town. There
fore it need not surprise you to
learn that the manner of his
going to bed was with a white
cotton night-cap on his
head and a little night-
light burning in a per
forated tin tower on a
stand at the head of his
bed. It was by the light
of this that the Doctor
saw, suddenly waking from
a sound sleep, the tall figure
of Dennis standing on the thresh
old, clad only in his night-shirt.
For a moment the Doctor lay still, staring idly;
astonished, but not wholly aroused. He had never
known Dennis to walk in his sleep before, but
from the glassy stare in the man's eyes the Doctor
supposed that his servant was in a somnambulistic
state. Then a sudden horror seized him and his
heart stood still, as, lowering his eyes, he per
ceived that Dennis held a hatchet in his hand.
He started up with a cry, but his feet had hardly
touched the floor when Dennis, uttering a snarl
like an angry beast, flew upon him and struck
savagely at him with the weapon.

The Doctor was a small man ; but he was
strong, and the terror of the situation lent him a
strength not his own. He could not overcome his
muscular antagonist; but for a few moments he
twisted the brawny wrist so as to keep the blade
of the hatchet from his face. But with the back

47

^ "ZHabe in prance." V

of the heavy instrument Dennis beat down his
guard, raining horrible blows upon his head,
which his victim, dazed and panting, could not
contrive to dodge or ward off. They struggled
thus for some minutes in absolute silence, and
then Dennis wrenched the hatchet around, and
the sharp blade cut the Doctor's scalp and then
fell upon his neck and arm and chest. But as the
blood spurted forth, a sudden desperate gleam of
mental clearness came to the half-stunned sufferer,
and he shrieked madly :

"Dennis! Hear me! I have n't got the
money ! I did n't take their offer ! "

For a moment the madman paused.

"It 's true," gasped the Doctor; "I did n't
accept their offer, look for yourself! — The letter
— on the desk ! "

Dennis's hold relaxed, and his victim sank
swooning to the floor. As consciousness departed,
he saw the tall shape take the letter from the
open desk and cross the room to read it by the
aid of the flickering lamplight. The last thing

^ t>ennts. V

he saw was the blood-smeared face of his old
servant bent over the little round yellow light.

It was daylight when he came to himself,
though he was conscious of this only by feeling
the sun streaming upon his closed eyelids. He
lay absolutely motionless in a sort of paralysis of
fear and apprehension, becoming slowly conscious
of strange dull pains in various parts of his body,
of sensations of icy chill here and there, and of a
curious sense of numbness and compression in
other places. Courage came to him as he began
to reflect that he was not at the immediate point
of death, whatever his condition might be. His
heart was beating; he breathed, with some diffi
culty it is true, and although he felt very weak,
and suffered from the nausea that follows physical
shock, his head was quite clear, and he felt con
scious of a returning vitality. His stiffness and
chill must be, he thought, the effect of the coagu
lated blood which had dried on him during the
night. He could not bear to open his eyes and
to see it.

What was he to do? Could he, unaided,
staunch his own wounds, and find strength to
crawl for a quarter of a mile for help at the
nearest dwelling? Could he even get as far as
the road, there to lie and wait for the unlikely
appearance of some tradesman or chance way
farer? A sudden chill of fear went through him
as he felt the door of the room gently open. It
was Dennis, he thought — Dennis come back to
finish his horrible work. He held his breath as
he heard steps approach his bed.

49

V "Sltabc in prance." f

The sheet was drawn back, and in a mo
ment he felt the touch of water upon his flesh.
Dennis was washing off the stains of blood !
What would he do next? Take his victim
away and bury him? Where? The Doctor
began vaguely to wonder where it would be,
whether under the cellar or in the great sand
pit at the end of the garden. He opened one
eye very slightly, and, as he saw the face of
Dennis above him, such a quick horror seized
upon him that he trembled in every limb, and
for a few moments lapsed into unconsciousness.

When his mind came back he found the
washing still going on, and he noted with wonder
that Dennis's touch was both gentle and firm.
Then he felt his servant draw the edges of the

wounds together, and it was no longer possible for
him to doubt that the strange creature who had
half murdered him was now trying to undo his
own work and to save his master's life.

For a few dazed moments the Doctor lay
still, trying to get this through his head. Then
the professional man came uppermost in him, and
he calmly remarked, without opening his eyes :

"You 'd better put some peroxide of hy
drogen in that water."

And the voice of Dennis responded as
calmly :

"I 've got it in, sir; same as you always
use."

Doctor Pessels opened his eyes, expecting to
see before him a vision of blood. Instead he
found himself lying on a bed of snowy cleanness,
his body swathed in cool bandages, and with no
more trace of last night's hideous scene about
him than if it had never been enacted. Dennis
bent over him, pale, but with compressed features.

" Do you know what you have done ? " de
manded Dr. Pessels, who was too simple and
direct in thought and speech to be much troubled
with vain timorousness.

"Yes, sir," said Dennis, growing a shade
paler.

"You have come within an ace of being a
murderer," went on the Doctor, sternly.

"I know it, sir," returned Dennis, without
ceasing in his ministrations.

"And what are you going to do now?"
asked the Doctor.

" I 'm going to cure you, Doctor dear," Den
nis replied, his voice breaking with a husky sound.
" I 'm going to cure you, and you know well
there 's none that can do it like me. And if I
bring you round, and you won't give me up to
the law, I 'II serve you faithful all my life. I will,

in franco." V*

Doctor, while there 's breath in me. Only tell
me you won't give me up to the law ! "

For some long instants the two men looked
at each other. Then Doctor Pessels said :

"I won't give you up to the law, Dennis.
You have mv word."

Dennis had spoken truly when he said that
he could care for the Doctor better than any one
else. Never in his life had the Doctor been so
cared for, so watched over, so ceaselessly, so
gently, or so thoughtfully and wisely tended.
Dennis had always been a good nurse, especially
in surgical cases. The Doctor had taught him
to be a good cook, and as an attached, faithful
and attentive domestic, this midnight assassin had
no equal. Night and day he was at the Doctor's
bedside, always ready to foresee and forerun his
slightest wish, always respectful, solicitous, atten
tive, silent. And day and night the Doctor lay
there and wondered what on earth he was going
to do with Dennis when he got well again — for
he was rapidly recovering.

Of course his first thought was to ship his
terrible servitor out of the country; then, as he
grew better, and realized how dependent he had
grown to be upon this perfect and unfailing
service, and on a thousand little cares and com
forts which no one else could provide for him, he
began to change his mind. Of course his faith in
human nature had received a rude shock; the
Doctor decided positively, after very carefully
considering the matter, that he really could never
feel again toward Dennis as he had felt before
52

^ £>cnnis. ^f

what he termed in his own thought "the incident."
But then, he reflected, the very happening that
had given him a lifelong distrust of Dennis had
given him a lifelong hold over that strange crea
ture. If he could no longer believe in the
devotion of love, he certainly could count on the
devotion born of fear. And in the end he decided
to keep Dennis.

Life went on much as usual in the stone
house on the hill. No one outside the house
knew of "the incident." No one had ever been
encouraged to call, and it was County Fair
season, when no one's absence from town was
likely to create much comment. When the
Doctor appeared on the street again, it was easy
to explain the stiffness in his shoulder and the
scar on his scalp by the explanation that he had
at last fallen down a dangerous flight of stone
steps in front of his house, as many people had
predicted he some day would.

Dennis was the same old Dennis as of yore.
The Doctor leaned rather more on him day by
day — nay, more — having taken stock with the
devil, he began to draw his dividends. It was
unwise, he said to himself, to cross Dennis in the
one passion, or mania, or whatever it might be
called, that was the mainspring of his "eccentri
cities." He took Dennis's advice about his new-
reckonings with the manufacturers who paid him
royalty, and indeed, made Dennis to some extent
his agent. The Doctor found himself growing
rich, really rich, rich enough to satisfy demands
much more exacting than those of his simple lazi
ness. He did not quite realize what this meant,
however, until he went away for a little trip to

S3

?_S^T vV-

re-establish his health, and found out what people
out in the world think of a man who does n't
have to be particular to a few hundreds in what
he spends for his pleasure. It really seemed, he
thought, to please the other people more even
than it pleased him.

It was the day after the Doctor returned
from his trip. He was walking up and down in
front of his house, looking across the valley to
where great heavy clouds were pushing unmistak
able snow-signs up into a bright November sky.
He had just been exhibiting to Dennis the great
fur overcoat he had purchased in his wanderings,
and now he was listening to Dennis's account of
his stewardship during the master's absence. With
54

"V" J>cnni$.

a complacency that would have been impossible
to him three months before, the Doctor heard
how Dennis had collected, to the last penny and
with interest, a certain debt owed to the inventor
of the Gargle by a dishonest compounder of drugs
in the county town.

Turning in their walk, almost as Dennis pro
nounced the name of the place, they saw two
representatives of that seat of law standing at the
very gate. One was the well-known figure of the
county-sheriff; his companion was a policeman in
uniform.

Dennis raised a yell of affright to heaven.

"You 've given me up!" he cried. "You 've
given me up to the law ! "

Dr. Pessels was utterly taken back.

« No — certainly not — never ! " he stam

mered. "Why, Dennis, you know I could n't do
such a thing as that ! "

"What's this, Doctor?" called the Sheriff
cheerily as he advanced up the walk; "have you
been lodging information against your man?"

y "IHabe in prance." V

"I?" cried the Doctor, indignantly; "no;
never! I promised him at the time — "

" At what time ? " The Sheriff snapped this
out in such a peremptory way that the Doctor's
mouth answered before the Doctor's mind was
aware of it :

"The time he tried to kill me."

"Tried to kill you!" repeated the Sheriff.

"To kill you!" echoed the policeman.

"Yes," said the poor Doctor; "but upon my
honor I — "

"We '11 attend to this in regular order," said
the Sheriff sternly, as he slipped the hand-cuffs on
Dennis's helpless wrists; "we did n't come after
this man for attempt to kill; we want him for
petty larceny. He stole a plush perfumery case
and a letter-scales out of a druggist's shop over in
our place, while he was collecting an account for
you, and he was seen to bring them home and
hide them behind your barn. Got a spade?"

When they dug up the hiding place of Den
nis's thefts, they found the decayed and mildewed
remains of aimless magpie pilferings which must
have represented a year's accumulation. Here he
had hidden a wonderful collection of odds and
ends — a pair of baby's shoes, an empty cruet-
stand, a plowshare, a silver candlestick, a milk-
can and an enamelled watch.

On the trial for assault with attempt to kill,
the defense was insanity. The Prosecuting Attor
ney did his best to make a point of Dennis's
business sagacity, but he had very little chance
with the eloquent and pathetic orator whom Dr.
Pessels had engaged to appear for the defense.
This gentleman got the aimless and purposeless
56

^ jDcnnts. ^

thefts into evidence somehow or other, and he
expatiated on Dennis's devoted fidelity to the
master against whom in a moment of madness he
had raised his hand, until the women in the
audience wept effusively ; Dr. Pessels let his honest
tears stream down his simple, fat face; the jurors
were, as the reporters say, "visibly affected," and
even the judge looked at the ceiling and cleared
his throat.

"And why," demanded
counsel for the Defense, fer
vently, "why, after this
catastrophe, did this em
ployer retain in his ser
vice this domestic who
had sought his life ?
Why did he turn to him
for care, for attendance, for
affection ? Why, when, through
the faithful nursing of this victim of a moment's
frenzy, — for I say to you, gentlemen, he, and not
the man he struck, is the victim in this case — why
did this employer retain him in his service, con
fide to his keeping higher trusts, and clasp him
to his bosom closer than ever before ? "

The speaker paused with extended hand.
Dr. Pessels evidently thought that he was directly
appealed to.

"Because it 's so everlasting hard to get any
sort of a good servant nowadays," he replied
huskily, through his tears.

The jury evidently thought so too. Dennis
is in the State Insane Asylum.

THE MINUET.

THE MINUET.

HEN I had read through the letter signed
Rodman Kernochan, I had some diffi
culty in associating the idea of its
authorship with the idea of the man
with whom I had had a brief but pleas
ant acquaintance eight or ten years before.
I had had a sort of stag-party and public-
dinner friendship with him during one notably
hilarious season in New York, but he was at that
time a soldier in the United States Army, and he
had all his life been a soldier in that larger army
of the Soldiers of Fortune; and so it happened
that we were not much thrown together. Later,
when I think I might have seen more of him, he
fell heir to some immense fortune and went abroad
to live. My clearest memory of him was the picture
my mind had preserved of our parting hand-clasp
on the steamer's deck.

As I remembered Captain Kernochan, he
was a big, strong, heavy man, rather slow and
quiet and self-contained, with hair and moustache
prematurely gray, stiff, thick and bristling like
thatch. His complexion was ruddy, almost rubi
cund : the complexion of a man who lived well
and fed hearty appetites; yet who observed &

(CI?e ZTlmuet.

certain sturdy temperance. His features were
hard in form and expression ; only his eyes, which
were large, dark-brown and somewhat sad,
seemed capable of kindness. In manners I
remembered him quiet, reserved and cour
teous ; a man who listened much and talked
rarely; and who, when he did talk, talked
admirably well; thoughtfully, and with a
cultured grace in his low, pleasant tones.
You felt that you would not care to enlist
as a private in that Captain's company if ',
an easy life were your ambition ; but that
if you were a private in his company, you
would go to the bottom of the Devil's pit
for him.

Here is his letter :

"You told me once, my dear sir, that your
business (so you called it,) as a student of human
nature, had made you more indulgent of the
absurdities and inconsistencies of humanity than
of many of its commonplace virtues. I am going
to trust to that indulgence that you will not laugh
at my present request, as I am sure I can trust
to your kindness not to refuse it.

"You used sometimes to reproach me with
what you called the callosity of my sympathies,
especially in matters of patriotism and humane
sentiment. The reproach was just. I have
knocked around the world so much and so long;
1 have seen so much of life's miseries and hard
ships and pains and horrors that I suppose I have
grown insensible and even indifferent to human

^ "iltabe in prance." V

suffering. Nay, I know that I could not have
got that reputation, as I certainly have, without
earning it. And when I say that I have seen,
without much wear and tear on my heart-strings,
five months in the prison-pen at Andersonville,
five years of Indian warfare, two epidemics of
cholera and one of yellow-fever, a conflagration
in which hundreds perished, and much more
than one man's fair allowance of 'moving acci
dents by flood and field,' you will understand why
I have to ask the indulgence of your experience
to believe that there are afflictions of my fellow-
men so trifling that most people would consider
them fanciful, which yet have the power to touch
me with a poignant pain, to fix themselves in my
memory as grief for the dead is fixed in other
minds, and to haunt me for years with an inex
tinguishable pity and an unsatisfied desire to
help and solace.

"My story takes me back a quarter of a
century in a life that has been full of fantastic
changes. I was then a young man of twenty-
three, still broken in health with my confinement
at Andersonville, alone in New York, without
friends, and with very little money, studying hard
for a profession for which I had little liking and
less capacity. I lived, for economy's sake, near
what was then Manhattan ville, and not far from
the old Bloomingdale Road. That delightful old
highway was already beginning to disappear
under the pick and shovel, to make way for a.
'boulevard' and the rest of that system of so-
called 'improvements,' which I suppose by this
time has left little trace of the outskirts of the
town as I knew them.

^ Cfy? tHtnuet. ^

" I was no more of a patriot in those days
than I am now; one city was the same to me
as another, and one street meant no more to
me than the next. So, though I was fond enough
of my pleasant surroundings in that good old-
fashioned neighborhood, I could not designate to
you by any reference to landmarks where it was
that I found, somewhere between Central Park
and the North River — perhaps in the then-
unfinished part of the park itself, a great old-
fashioned place which had once been the residence
of some historic gentleman whose name I have
forgotten. It was a grand old house, standing in
grounds that must have covered many acres, and
that had once been cultivated with exquisite taste.
There were many such places in the region at
that time, most of them dropping into decay ; but
this was of all of them the largest, seemingly the
oldest, and its grounds were the most quaintly
laid out in flower-gardens and formal shrubberies
— lanes of box and avenues of privet, and here
and there great ragged evergreens of all sorts
slowly growing out of the odd shapes into which
some Dutch gardener had clipped them a century
before. And all this stood in the way of some
devilish ' improvement ' — was it a boulevard or
an aqueduct or a horse-car line or what ? 1 have
forgotten; but I know that the beautiful place
was doomed to destruction, and I know for a
long time it seemed that I was the only one who
would mourn its fall.

"There was a great old flower-garden at the
back of the house, where I used to go to read
and study, partly because I loved to walk between
the neglected beds that still kept up some pitiful

V" "ittabe in prance.*' V

show of flowering within their sturdy borders of
box, and to catch smells of honeysuckle and
southernwood; and partly because in that
secluded spot I could not hear the pickaxes of
the sappers and miners in the van of the March
of Progress, nor see the scar they were making on
the face of nature.

"For a long time I thought — indeed I was
sure — that I was the only human being who
frequented the place; but after a while, as famil
iarity trained my eye to notice little things, I
became conscious of the fact that some other
person or persons shared my love for the old
garden. He, she, or they shared also my reverent
respect for it, and refrained from ravaging the
beds or spoiling the flowering shrubs. I permitted
myself a modest posy for my button-hole : so, it
seemed, did some one else. I found this out when
1 got to noticing how many flowers there were in
certain favorite clumps of mine. By and by,
64

^ (CI?c minuet. <*>

becoming interested and curious, for never had I
seen a soul within the enclosure, I searched for
footsteps and found them. It was no easy task,
for the walks had the smoothness and firmness of
great old age, hut by diligent scrutiny of every
patch of dust or mould, I finally discovered and
individualized, if I may so express it, two different
footprints; and I satisfied myself that, save my
own, none but those two pairs of feet trod the
garden paths.

" Both were small feet — one a man's and one
a woman's — and both were peculiar. The man
wore shoes with the narrow, square, sharp-cornered
toe that is affected by South Americans and
Cubans — I believe it is called the Creole or
Spanish toe. The print of the woman's sole was
beautifully small and dainty; but the shape and
the character of the impression puzzled me much,
until I guessed the truth : that she wore slippers
— and uncommonly small slippers, too. There
fore, I reasoned, she must live near by.

" I was twenty-three years old, as I have told
you, and I made up my mind to find out who
that woman was. Perhaps I should say that I
determined to discover the woman and the man ;
but as for the man, his toes had already pre
judiced me against him. And he seemed, at the
best, unnecessary. So you see that I, too, have
been twenty-three. I suppose some people would
not believe it of me.

"My hours in the garden had been invariable.
From nine, when I finished my breakfast, to
eleven when I went to my lectures ; and from
seven, when I finished my dinner, until eight, when
1 returned to my room to begin my evening's
6s

work. The day after I made my resolve I took
an early breakfast; went to my garden, and
entered it noiselessly by one of the privet-bordered
paths, whose high hedge would screen me from
observation, while it allowed me to peep through
its straggling twigs.

" I had not gone half the length of the path
when I saw him — for it was the man and he
was alone. The first thing that I saw of him was
his square-toed shoes; then, as I raised my eyes
I saw one of the oddest and one of the oldest

66

IT <El?c

figures that I have ever encountered. The square-
toed shoes were low-cut, with silver buckles. The
breeches were tight to the leg, of black broad
cloth somewhat shiny with age. Then came a
yellow nankeen waistcoat and a swallow-tail coat
of a faded mulberry color, with very small silver
buttons. A great black satin stock enveloped the
neck. The hat that went with this costume was
a beaver, a real beaver, a genuine antique, fuzzy,
with a crown like an inverted bell, and a wonder
fully broad rolling brim. I think you will under
stand what I mean when I say that that hat was
an improbable hat. I know that I stood
and stared at it for a minute or two,
slowly taking in all its queerness be
fore I thought of inspecting its
wearer any further.

"We speak often of a
costume suiting its wearer.
In this case I should rather
say that the man suited his
costume. He was old, in
credibly old in the face,
clean shaven, wrinkled, yel
low as old ivory — and his
wig ! It absolutely made you
believe in the hat; it was [
such a marvel of curly, shiny,
pomaded, jet-black juvenility. ...
And yet for all its obvious age it
was a sprightly figure that walked
briskly along the garden paths, evidently
taking a morning constitutional. And there was
something positively fascinating in the amiable,
intelligent, interested way in which that wrinkled

6 67

Tf "tttabe in prance." V

old face grinned and grimaced and mowed at the
empty air as though it held converse with the
invisible.

"For half an hour I watched him as he
walked smartly about the grounds; and then I
went away half ashamed of thus spying on his
privacy, and yet too bashful to present myself to
his notice, although the oddity and eccentricity
of his appearance had already so caught my
fancy and aroused my wonder that I ' had quite
forgotten to trouble myself about the yet undis
covered wearer of the dainty feminine slippers. It
must have been indeed a fascination that brought
me back the same hour the next morning, and the
morning after that, just to watch the brisk little
old man from behind my screen of shrubbery.
And on that third morning I saw a sight that
held me spell-bound.

"The old man stopped short in his pro
menade and tapped the firm smooth walk two or
three times with the tip of his toe. Then he took
three steps forward, made a low bow — a very
low bow — with his hands spread out, then took
three steps back, and then, with the rapidity and
agility of a fighting-cock, skipped fifteen or twenty
feet forward, rose a good half-a-yard into the air,
and cut a pigeon-wing the like of which I had
never seen before. Down he came, back he
skipped; then to right, then to left; he bowed,
he smirked, he waved his hands in the air, he
flourished his lean old legs in marvelous intricate
steps, advancing, retreating, turning and twirling,
swinging this way and that in airy circles and
semi-circles, and each time that he came back to
the place from which he started, he drew the tips

6$

of his shrivelled fingers together, raised them to
his lips, threw a kiss to an imaginary public, and
made three low bows, right, left and centre, while
his poor old yellow features were twisted and
puckered with grimaces of delighted vanity. He
was dancing.

"After that I had to make his acquaintance;
and a few days later I did; contriving to enter
the garden just as he left it, and to pass the time
of day with him, as when I was a boy in the
country it was customary to do with any stranger
met upon the highway. I expected to find him
shy and embarrassed, but he was not, in the least.
To my salutation of 'A fine day, sir!' he
answered cordially and pleasantly :

" ' Indeed it is, sir, and quite like the weather
we used to have.'

V "XRate in prance.'1 V

" In a week we were good friends, and I
knew his whole history. Do you know who he
was ? He was Carnanti, the old dancing master,
the man who taught the modish people of New
York to dance, who directed their balls and chose
their music and formed their code of etiquette —
in my father's time ! Think of it, my dear sir, his
life in the world had ended before mine began,
and to all intents and purposes two centuries
shook hands in our two persons.

"And then I heard about the slippers.
Proud as he was of the triumphs of his past, in
America and in France — he was ballet master at
the opera in Paris during the latter part of Napo
leon's consulate, and emigrated in 1805, in
testimony of his principles, being unable to bear
the sight of the Corsican upstart declared Emperor
and seated on the throne of the Bourbons — he
was prouder still of something else; and when he
told me of it he got up from his seat as if to
speak with more respect.

"'It may not have escaped your memory,
sir, that I have the honor of being the husband
of la Cerita ! '

"It had indeed escaped my memory, but I
could quite clearly recall my father's enthusiastic
ravings over that incomparable queen of dancers,
beside whom, in his opinion, all other artists of
the ballet were clumsy charlatans.

"It was she who came to the garden with
him, and the footprint I had seen was made by
the woman out of whose slipper a King of France
once drank champagne. But, as he remarked,
his wife was no longer in her first youth, (as far
as I can make out she must have been sixty and
70

^ (Efc ITlinuct. V

he eighty-five or six at this time,) and she pro
menaded herself only in what he called ' the
choice of the day' — namely, the dry warm hours
of the early afternoon.

" I presented myself at the court of the ex-
queen a few days later. She was a little old
woman dressed in a limp, shiny, old-fashioned
silk; faded, wrinkled, exquisitely neat, and gentle
and sweet, with a smell of pot-pourri about her —
which is in part the reason why the thought of a
withered rose-petal always comes to me when I
remember her.

"It was to these old people that I said
one day :

" ' What was the Minuet ? Will you not tell
me something about the Minuet?'

"Camanti gave a little start, his fingers
trembled and a touch of color rose to his yellow
cheek.

"'It is — no, it was the Dance of Kings,
and it died with the Kings. There are Kings no
more and there will no more be a Minuet. In all
the world there was never — no, never — such a
dance as the Minuet.'

"I tried to make him describe it, to tell
me something of its figures and steps, but its
intricacies and refinements were very soon too
much for his English. At last he turned to his
wife who sat silent, smelling now and then of a
spray of southernwood which she held daintily
between the tips of her fingers.

"' Madam,' he said, 'would you have the
grace to illustrate for this gentleman?'

"She rose and cast a timorous glance about
her, as if to assure herself that no one else was

7 r

\

looking. Then without a word she took her place
opposite him and I saw the Minuet danced.

" Backward and forward they went, bowing
and smiling to each other, with coquettish gesticu
lations and bows and curtseys of profoundly
ceremonious salutation. They advanced, they
retreated, they crossed, they circled, they kissed
their hands and made their bows to partners who
danced only in their fond old eyes; they waved
their trembling hands in the air, and sprang up
from time to time in funny little old-fashioned
steps, like the marionette figures that used to
dance in a glass box on the top of a certain kind
of street organ. Left over from the last century,
these two pitiful, odd old figures went through
72

IP (E!?c ZHtnud. V"

every least step and movement of that forgotten
dance, to music that had been a lifetime mute.

"I sat and watched them, with something in
my throat that forbade me to laugh, until they
reached the end and the old man gave a quick
little upward glance, as though to see some long-
dead leader drop his baton. They stood for a
moment face to face, looking fixedly at each
other, as though they were slowly coming to
themselves after a moment of rapturous ecstacy,
and then, sobbing like children, they fell into
each other's arms.

" That is all my story. A few days later I
went to Mexico and took service in the army of
Juarez; and never again did I see either of my
two strange friends. And that I never have seen
them; that I never, in all my years of wander
ing, sought them out to show them some trivial
kindness; that I was noi with them when the old
man died, to give my arm to the poor old woman
who survived him, and to make this frail creature,
so long tenderly watched over and cared for by
her adoring husband, feel that there was at least
one person left in the world to whom she could
turn for sympathy and attention — this, my friend,
this has for twenty-five years weighed on a con
science callous enough to the memory of a hun
dred atrocities which I have seen unmoved and
unstirred to pity.

" Camanti is dead. Long ago, when I was
in the Sandwich Islands, I read of his demise in a
newspaper that was then three years old. Why I

73

V "2Ha6e in prance." V

never made search for his widow I do not know.
Perhaps it is because I have weakly tried to
cherish all these years the remembrance of them
as I saw them in that sweet old garden that so
became them, and that I have been just coward
enough to avoid facing the certain discovery that
this last pleasure had been taken out of their
gentle and loving old lives.

"This brings me to my request. A few days
ago, I saw in an obscure French theatrical paper
a statement that the grave of the great Cerita in
Calvary Cemetery, New York, was without a
stone. What I ask of you is to see if this be so,
and to use the enclosed draft in providing a fitting
sepulchre for my two old friends, wherever they
may lie."

I shall do what Ker-
nochan asked me to,

but not until Spring,

when I shall lay

upon the tomb of

the two old people a

bunch of violets that

grow in a certain old-fashioned garden I know of,

so that I, too, may have a part in this old-time

friendship.

74

A PINT 'S A POUND.

A PINT 'S A POUND.

Jgfek

£

HEN THE Circuit Judge had seen his
horse put up in the stable of the one
nameless tavern at Pondwater Court-
House, had taken a drink at the bar
of the establishment, in company with an
other bar- — namely, the entire legal profession of
Pondwater County, consisting of Mr. Hi Baker,
the local lawyer, a short and very slouchy oldish
man, with a stubbly, rounded gray beard; Mr.
Woodruff Sitz, the lawyer from Walloon, and Ex-
Judge Pumfert, who kept the hotel, and who,
occasionally, when he was sober, took assignments
to defend, he looked inquiringly at the Sheriff,
who had just come in, and stood swinging the
Court -House keys and gazing suggestively at
the bar.

"Any business, Mr. Huff?" he inquired.
The Circuit Judge was a tall, thin, clean
shaven man with prominent aquiline features, a
keen eye and a fine mop of wavy dark hair
crowning his high forehead. He was younger
than his companions; but it was easy to see that
they looked up to him as a man of greater fibre
and greater vigor : indeed, he had lawyer, politi
cian and People's Choice written all over him,
76

A smile of amused reflection stirred the
tobacco-stained corners of the Sheriff's mouth.

"Well," he said, slowly, stroking his beard,
" got something amusing, anyway. Got an assault-
and-battery case from over Huckleberry Hill, and
two of them old original Huckleberry Hunkers
locked up in the stone crock. My! ain't them
two specimens ! Eh, Hi ? "

"Guess His Honor ain't seen nothing like
them yet," assented Mr. Baker, with a nod of
conviction and an expressive shift of his quid.

"They talk about them Digger Injins in
Californy," broke in the Ex-Judge, his hoarse
deep voice booming like a rusty bell, "I don't
believe they are one mite wussen that lot on the
other side of Huckleberry Hill. Civilization !
Why, they don't know the meaning of the word.
There ain't a one of them can read or write, and
their morals, sir, their morals, would suit a — a —
a hog."

"Would n't suit no hog ever I see," said the
Sheriff, tersely.

77

in prance." V

" No, nor me neither," Mr. Baker agreed
with him, shifting the quid back, "/never see
no hog was n't a gentleman alongside of a
Huckleberry Hill man. And sows," he concluded,
reflectively, "are the Queen of England alongside
of their women."

" How 's that, Sitz ? " inquired the Circuit
Judge, addressing the third man, who had not yet
spoken. He, too, was lank and clean shaven;
but his hair was gray and his features were of a
saturnine cast. You saw at once that he, too,
was a lawyer and a politician — also, that he
never had been and never would be the People's
Choice. His response was dry and brief.

"Ain't sayin' nothin'. My case."

" Oh ! " said the Circuit Judge. " In that case,
gentlemen, take a drink with me and we '11 get to
business."

The drink was taken, and they all set out
for the little stone court-house at the other end
of the village street, the Sheriff, a smile of satis
faction now illuminating his face, having taken
his place by the side of the Circuit Judge. He
dangled his big keys as he walked, making them
clink pleasantly; and in that simple suggestion of
official power began and ended all outward and
ceremonial show of the majesty and dignity of the
law in Pondwater County.

As they walked along, the Sheriff told the
Judge brief tales of the wretchedly degraded,
recklessly happy outcasts who lived on the further
side of the mountain, scraping a mean livelihood
out of huckleberry-picking in the season, and
hunting and fishing the rest of the year. They
formed just such a colony as may still be found
78

in many of the wild forest-regions of the more
mountainous parts of New York, Pennsylvania
and New Jersey — the shrewd, ignorant, lawless,
lazy offspring of early settlers of the class known
in the South as "poor white trash."

The legal party came to the ridiculous little
Grecian temple, in yellowing moss-stained stucco,
which served Pondwater County for a temple of
the law. The Sheriff unlocked the door of the
musty little court-room, and went around to the
jail-wing at the back to get his prisoners. The
others filed in and took their places, the Circuit
Judge climbing carefully to his seat on a peril
ously small platform, and dusting the chair
carefully before he sat down. A few country
people lounged in, a few boys filtered in, a few
girls peeped in, only the tips of their sun-bonnets
showing above, around the edge of the door, and

79

*P "tftabe in prance/* V

the tips of their prehensile toes below, crisped up
tight and scraping at the sill. At last the Sheriff
arrived with his prisoners, and Court was opened.
The Sheriff stood behind his two prisoners as they
sat on a long seat under the Judge's desk.

" Miss Sprull," he called out, " Hi, you there,
Sairey, come up here ! "

At this command, a tall, gaunt woman with
a thin face, whose leathery skin was almost of the
same pale-brown hue of her coarse wispy hair,
dragged tight over her head and tied behind in a
knot the size of a hickory-nut, stalked up the
narrow aisle with a loose swinging step. In one
hand she held by its strings a black bonnet of a
marvelous antique pattern, stained, bedraggled
and twisted out of shape. Her dress, or at least,
the garment which hung on her, was of calico as
faded and weather-beaten as her complexion ; and
her feet displayed a pair of huge, shapeless
prunella shoes that must have been purchased a
generation before that session of court. She sat
80

down on the extreme end of the bench on which
sat the two prisoners. She gave no sign of
noticing them, and yet, in all that countryfied
assemblage, she and they evidently belonged to a
class apart from all the rest.

They were both dressed in homespun, and
for dirty, defiant raggedness, it was a stand-off
between them. As a Study in Faded Browns
either of them would have taken the first prize in
a competition of artists' models.

Reuben Cruder was short, squat and frog-
like. His inconceivably short neck set his fat,
solemn face on a slant, so that his bulging eyes
seemed to look straight up in the air, instead of
before him. He sat with his hands folded under
his round belly, and his serious features gave as
much indication of the character of his thoughts
as the face of the Egyptian Sphinx gives of her

Sr

V "tttabe in prance." V

contract-price. But Jake Hyker, his partner in
crime, was a man of immoderate tallness. He
must have been over six feet and a half high, and
when he stood on end, swaying irregularly to-and-
fro, balanced by the enormous red hands that
hung almost down to his knees, he seemed about
to break at the joints, like a mast ill-spliced in
several places. The head on the top of this
great, grotesque, big-boned, knob-jointed, uncouth
creature was hardly larger than an ordinary man's
two fists, set with the second knuckles and the
heels of the palms together — and that is an
illustration suggested also by the shape of the odd
cranium, for his skull seemed to slope both ways
from a median ridge-pole. His voice, as he
answered to his name — rising to his full height
and wavering disjointedly as he stood — was of a
character that belonged distinctively to the little
cocoanut head, and not at all to the great bony
corn-shock body. Thin, high, querulous, penetrat
ing, with a curious metallic quaver in it that
seemed to be always hanging on the edge of a
musical cadence, it squawked out in the little
court-room, ringing, strong and pervasive, and its
sound seemed to stir in all those who heard it a
spasmodic impulse of involuntary, unthinking
laughter.

Mr. Sitz arose, representing the plaintiff, to
make a brief statement of the facts in the case.

"Your Honor," he said, "this here is one of
the most extree-ordinary cases that has ever come
under my notice. I propose to show you, sir,
that these two men here, Reuben Cruder and
Jacob Hyker, have made an attempt upon the
life of this here lady, Miss Sarah Oreanna Sprull,
82

^ 'ft pint *s a Pounk" IP

of the most diabolical and peculiar character. I
should premise, Your Honor, by saying that this
man Cruder, who seems to be the instigator of
the villainy is, or was, at the time of the commis
sion of the crime, engaged to be married to this
plaintiff. And I will show you, sir, that on the
thirtieth day of last month, between the hours of
two and three in the afternoon, this here Cruder,
accompanied by this here Hyker, entered the
house of this here plaintiff, and indooced her, by
means of a pecuniary consideration, to enter a
hogshead of water — "

"Hi, what 's that, Brother Sitz?" interrupted
the Judge, startled out of his judicial gravity.

"Indooced this here lady to enter a hogs
head of water," went on Brother Sitz, with impres
sive dignity; "wherein, she being therein, this
here Cruder, aided and abetted by this here
Hyker, did feloniously, violently and by force of
arms, thrust under the water the head of this here
lady, meaning thereby to deprive her of life, and
of the means of breathing air. Your Honor, I
will now call the plaintiff to the stand. Miss
Sprull, get up there in that chair by Mr. Huff."

All eyes were fixed in strained attention
upon Miss Sarah Oreanna Sprull, as she clambered
into the chair which the Sheriff had placed upon
the flat side of a shoe-box.

"Miss Sprull," said her counsel, "do you
recognize these two men?"

" I do" said Miss Sprull, with rasping
emphasis.

"This here man, Reuben Cruder, is or was,
on the thirtieth day of August last, your affianced
husband — that is, he was engaged to be married

7 S3

V "IHabe in prance." ^

to you? I understand you to say yes. This here
is the man ? "

"That 's him," said Miss Sprull, promptly;
"and he 's a no-good."

"And this here Hyker is the man who was
with him on the day mentioned ? "

"That 's him," Miss Sprull assented; "and
he 's another."

"Now, Miss Sprull," said her counsel, part
ing his coat-tails preparatory to sitting down,
"will you have the goodness to tell His Honor
what happened at your house on the day
mentioned ? "

"I was peelin' inions," began Miss Sprull,
without the slightest hesitation, "when Reuben
Cruder come in with that Jake Hyker. And as
soon as I sot eyes on them, I knowed there was
something wrong. They ain't neither of them
much good by themselves, but when them two
gits together, they ain't no good at. all. Reuben,
he come up to me, and he says, 'Sarah,' says he,
* do you want to make three shillin' ? ' ' Course I
do, you fool,' says I. 'All right,' says he; and
out he and that Hyker goes, and gits the big
hogshead that stands under the rain-spout, and
fetches it right into my kitchen and sets it down
in the middle of my clean floor. 'There,' he says,
'now you fill that up plum-full with water, and
Jake here, he '11 give you three shillin' for the
job.' 'Soft water or hard?' says I. 'It don't
make no difference,' says he. Well, I knowed he
had his pockets full, that Cruder, for I knowed
he 'd just sold a steer, and I seen they was both
full; and thinks I to myself, thinks I, 'three
shillin' is three shillin',' and I just goes and fetches

V "ft pint s a Pounfc.* *f

a. bucket; and I was one hour a fillin' that
dratted barrel. And them fellows had a bottle
with them, and first one would take a drink out
of it, and then the other, until you could n't
hardly tell which was which. And when I gets
the barrel plum full and runnin' over, I says to
them, 'There you are,' I says. And that Hyker,
he paid the three shillin', paid it right down. Oh,

I knowed he was full the moment I sot eyes on
him. And then Gruder says to me, ' Do you
want to make another three shillin' ? ' says he.
'Course I do,' says I. 'What do them brogans
of yours weigh?' says he. 'I don't know,' says
I; 'I ain't never weighed 'em.' 'Take 'em off,'
says he, and I took 'em off. And then, right like
that, 'fore I knowed what they was going to do,
Gruder, he picks me up by the feet, and Hyker,
he ketches me by the back of my neck, and
Jedge, as I 'm a living woman, them two villains
soused me right into that hogshead, and the water
was that cold I was most froze to death. Then

Hyker, he says, ' Her head goes, too,' and
Gruder, he says, 'Her head goes, too/ and they
jabbed my head right under the water. I like to
drownded. Then I hollered, and I guess they
got sort of scared. Anyways they took me out. I
could n't never have got out of myself. I was near
froze, and scared half out of my life, and I just
hoofed it all the way to town. And Mr. Huff,
he went up and arrested them. And I ain't never
felt just right since," concluded Miss Sprull,
glancing at her counsel with the satisfied air of a
witness who has done her full duty.

Looks of amazement and incredulity were
exchanged all over the Court room. At the
request of Mr. Sitz, the Sheriff ascended the
stand, and testified briefly concerning the arrest
of the prisoners.

8f>

T a Pint 's a Poun&." *T

"They were fighting each other when I got
there," he said; "but they was both of them too
intoxicated to do each other any hurt."

"What was the subject of the contention?"
inquired the Circuit Judge.

"I dunno," said the Sheriff. "I cou/d n't
make out. This man Gruder, here, he was too
drunk to talk, and all the way down to the jail
the other man was trying to get at him, and kept
a-hollering out, 'A pint 's a pound!' 'A pint 's a
pound ! ' and calling him profane and blaspheme-
ous names."

The Circuit Judge cast a puzzled look first
at one and then at the other of the two prisoners,
who sat imperturbably on their bench, their fea
tures displaying no interest whatever. At last
he said :

"Jacob Hyker, it appears from the Sheriff's
statement that you were less under the influence
of liquor than your companion. Take the stand,
and the Court will hear what you have to say for
yourself."

Calmly, deliberately, and without a trace of
embarrassment in his manner, Mr. Hyker ascended
the stand, took a seat, and cheerfully announced
to the entire Court-room, in his clearest nasal
twang :

" I was biled."

Here Mr. Gruder suddenly awoke to an
instant of interest in the proceedings, and from
his seat addressed the witness, in the way of
correction.

"/ was biled," he said.

"Yes," said Mr. Hyker, with the air of giv
ing a thoughtful opinion; "you was cert'nly biled,"
87

V "tftabe in prance." V

"If you said we was both biled, you would
n't be telling no lies," continued Mr. Gruder.

" Well," said the witness to the Circuit
Judge, "we was both biled, him and me."
" Do you mean that you were in
toxicated ? " asked the Court.

"Of course," said Mr. Hyker;
"did n't I tell you we was biled?
Like as it might have happened to
any of you gentlemen here," he
added, with a wave of his hand
that included the whole legal pro
fession. " You see it come about
this way. I '11 tell you just how it
happened."

Mr. Hyker leaned back in his
chair and crossed his long legs. He felt
that he had an agreeable and interesting story to
narrate, and he wore a mien of cheerful confidence.
" Here 's how it was : Gruder, he come to
my place about eight o'clock Monday morning,
and I guess he had a load on then. I thought so
then; but it 's kinder hard to tell. There ain't
much difference in Gruder whether he 's got a
load on or whether he ain't. Well, him and me,
we had two or three drinks, may be more. First
thing I knowed he bust out crying. Then, of
course, I see he had a load on. But it 's just this
way with me, gentlemen, I can't stand it. Often
as I 've seen that man drunk, every time he busts
out crying it makes me feel bad. Says I to him,
1 What 's the matter?' says I. Says he to me,
'I 've give my word to marry Sairey Oreanna
Sprull,' says he, 'and I ain't fitten,' says he; 'I am
that drunk and shif'less and wuthless/ says he,

IT "ft Pint s a Pounb" V

'that I ain't fitten to marry no respectable
woman,' says he; 'and besides,' says he, 'I sold a
steer yesterday,' he says, 'and I Ve got the money
in my clo'es, and I want to go to a ball to-morrow
night down Walloon way, and there 's another gal
down there,' he says, 'that I might have if I
chose; and I don't feel like it was right for me to
marry Sairey Oreanna and get drunk and break
her heart, and I wisht I was dead,' says he.

"'Well,' says I to him, 'what's to hinder
your breakin' off with Sairey Oreanna? If you
don't marry her,' says I, 'what does she care how
drunk you get ? ' ' Oh,' says he, ' I could n't do
no such a thing as that,' says he. 'Ain't I passed
my word to Sairey Oreanna that I 'd marry her ? '
'Well,' says I, 'if she wants to get shet of you on
account of your wuthlessness, that 's a different
thing, ain't it?' says I. ' T ain't she that wants
to get shet of me,' says he. 'Oh,' says I, 'it's
you that wants to get shet of her?' says I.
'Well,' says he, 'that ain't exactly what I set out
to say,' says he, 'but I guess that 's near enough.
Anyways,' he says, 'I '11 tell you what I '11 do.
I '11 go and get another bottle, and we '11 talk it
over and try and find out just what I do mean.'

"Well, we got another bottle, him and me,
and we talked it over, and we come to the
conclusion that him being so wuthless, Sairey
Oreanna ought to be let get shet of him; but,
however, that it was n't no ways right that Sairey
Oreanna should be left without no man at all to
marry her. Well, finally I says, says I, 'see here,
I '11 do it; / '11 marry Sairey Oreanna.' Yes, I
know I had n't ought to have said it, but I
had n't seen Sairey Oreanna in four years, and it

$9

in prance." V

gets dreffle lonesome up on the mountain some
times, and I was biled. I was reel biled, Jedge.

"'You will?' says he. 'I will,' says I.
'You will not] says he. 'Why will I not?' says
I. 'Where do I come in?' he says; 'do you think
I 'm going to give you up my gal and not get
nothin' for it ? I 'm your friend, Hyker,' says he,
'but in a matter like this there ain't no such a
thing as friendship. It 's business. If you want
to take that lady away from me,' he says, ' you 've
got to pay for her, every cent she 's wuth.' 'Well,
what is she wuth?' says I. 'On the hoof?' says
he. 'Yes, on the hoof,' says I. 'Well,' says he,
'I don't rightly know. How would seven cents a
pound strike you?' You see, Jedge, we was
biled. That was all.

"Well, the upshot of it all was, I agreed to
take his gal off his hands, and pay him seven
cents a pound for her. I had n't got my wits
about me that day, Jedge; for a fact, I had n't.
Then the question come up, how was we to weigh
her? There was n't no scales within five miles
of Huckelberry Hill, and we knowed she would
n't never come down here to town to be weighed.
We was biled, but we knowed that. Well, first
off we did n't know what to do; and then I says
to him, says I, 'here,' says I, '/'ll go and get a
bottle this time, and we '11 talk this thing over.'
And, Jedge, he had n't taken more 'n two drinks
out of that bottle before that man had an idee
that would n't have come to me if I 'd waited a
hundred years. When he 's real biled, Cruder is
sometimes right smart, he is. Says he to me,
'We '11 fix it this way: A pint 's a pound, ain't
it?' 'Yes,' says I, 'a pint's a pound.' You

QQ

IP £{ pint s a Pounk" IF

know that rhyme, Jedge, 'A pint's a pound, the
world around.' 'Yes,' I says to him; 'that 's right;
that 's so. A pint 's a pound, sure.'

"'Well, then,' he says, 'I '11 tell you what
we '11 do. We take a hogshead and fill it plum-
full of water. Then we put Sairey Oreanna into
it, and what runs over is her weight. For every
pint she runs she 's a pound on the scales.' See
the point, Jedge ?

" Well, I did n't at first, myself. Says I,
'Cruder, that there water will run away,' says I.
'You can't measure spilt water, no way,' says I.
'Measure your grandmother, Jake,' says he; 'you
ain't got no more sense than a sick cow,' Jake
says to me. 'When you take the lady out of the
hogshead,' says he, 'you fill it right up again;
and as many pints as you put in,' he says, 'that 's
as many pounds as she weighs,' says he. Now,
do you see, Jedge?

" Well, we went around to her house, arjcl
the minute I seen her, I see the joke was on
Cruder. Jest look, Jedge, how she is — nothing
but skin and bones. Ain't even got a head-full
of hair. Why, if it was n't for them shoes of
hern, she 'd blow away. Dry hay would be juicy
to her. Why, I see at a glance there was n't a
hundred weight of her, such as it was. Oh, yes,
Jedge, I see I had a big joke on Cruder.

"Well, you heered her tell her end of the
story. She told it about right. That 's correct,
Jedge. That 's the way it happened.

" But I tell you, the joke come when she run
out of the house and we set to work fillin' up the
barrel. Jedge, you ought to have seen Cruder's
face when we 'd finished the count. You 'd 'a.'

1P "inabt in prance." ^

died laughin'. Jedge, she did n't weigh ninety-
seven pounds. As true as I 'm settin' here,
ninety-six pints and one gill was all we could get
into that barrel without running over. And when
Gruder see he was n't going to get no more than
$6.75, he was so mad we just had to fight.
That 's when Mr. Huff come in and interrupted us.
"But I had the joke on Gruder. 'A pint's
a pound,' I says to him; 'them was your words.
A pint 's a pound, the world around. Stick to
your bargain,' says I. < A pint 's a pound, Gruder,'
I says; 'a pint 's a pound.' "

"This case," said the Circuit Judge, rising
from his seat, and addressing a tumultuous assem
blage, "will be settled out of Court."

A CAPTURE.

A CAPTURE.

WAS a dark night — a night of silence
and snow and of an infinite loneliness.
It had been snowing since noon, not
hard, but ceaselessly; a damp heavy
snow, with no breath of wind to stir
it; and now that the evening had set
in, it seemed as though it were begin
ning to return whence it came, in the
thin pale fog that was rising from the bottom
lands of the valley. Everywhere the white carpet
stretched; roads and paths were blotted from
sight and the snowy shroud covered the trees of
the forest where we walked. There was no sound
there but the fall of our feet, or the low thud of
an over-burdened bough letting down its damp
load — save when at long intervals a dry twig
snapped with a noise like a distant pistol-shot.

"This night," said my French friend, Gaston,
breaking the silence we had maintained for the
last two miles, "reminds me of a certain night
twenty-one years ago that I passed in a forest just
like this, except that there were wolves there, and
Prussians. No two days are exactly alike; but
there are some nights, especially some Winter
nights, that seem to repeat themselves exactly.

94-

t^ fl (Capture. V

The night I speak of was known in Rethel, where
I was quartered — (it was in our War, you know:
what you call the Franco - Prussian War,) as
Berthine's Night — la nuit a Berthine. Did I
ever tell you about Berthine Pichon ? No ? Well,
then, I will tell you the story now. It is odd
enough ; and perhaps it may take a quarter of a
mile off our way. Anything is better than this
hideous silence, which bores me and gives me my
nerves."

And my mercurial Gallic friend tamped the
brierwood pipe he was smoking under the cover

of his hand, shrugged the snow off his broad
shoulders, cursed the weather, and then told me
this tale, as we walked on through the silent
forest in the deepening night.

"I was at Rethel that devilish Winter, de
tached from my regiment and in charge of a sort
of militia organization which the people of the
town had got up. Rethel is an out-of-the-way

95

V "217a6e in Draftee." ^

place, but it is an old town with traditions and
fortifications, and the citizens had determined to
resist the invaders and to stand a siege, if neces
sary. Of course most of their able-bodied men
were away in the army; but they bought guns
and some old-fashioned artillery, that happily never
had to be fired off, and they drilled like good
fellows, under my command — all sorts and con
ditions of men : butchers and bakers and grocers
and lawyers and notaries and carpenters and even
apothecaries. Oh, I tell you, they meant it, too !
They were only too anxious for the Prussians to
come. But the days and weeks went on and the
Prussians did not come. They were in the neigh
borhood, sometimes within eight or ten miles of
the town, but on the other side of the forest.
Several times they did enter the forest, but I sup
pose it was only for wood, or perhaps for game.
At any rate, as it turned out, they did not want
Rethel. We knew of all their movements, for we
had the best sentinel in the world : an old game
keeper and forester who lived in a little house in
the very heart of the wood, and who could hear
a rabbit wag its tail, as far off, my friend, as you
could see.

"This old man was named Nicolas Pichon,
and Berthine was his daughter. She was a fine,
strapping big girl — I think that she and her
father were rather superior in every way, physi
cally, mentally and morally, to the most of the
peasants in that region. These things sometimes
happen in a country that has had a few centuries
of feudal rule. At any rate, she was what you
might call a fine figure of a girl : big, plump, rosy,
as strong as an ox, and afraid of neither wolves

^ fl Capture. V

nor Prussians. On the night of which I speak — •
the night that was so like this — the old man had
gone into town to notify us that a detachment of
Prussian infantry had passed near his house that
day. He generally reported once or twice a week,
and took provisions back with him when he
returned. He lived in a small old 'stone house
eight miles from Rethel; and he made nothing of
running the whole distance — running, remember
— and back in the course of an evening. He
took his two great big hounds with him to defend
him from the wolves, which were ferocious in the
Winter time; and the two women barricaded

themselves in the house until his return. They
were safe enough there; the house had stood for
centuries, and I suppose it is as strong to-day as
it ever was. It frightened the old mother to be
left in this way, and she sometimes complained to
me when I went out there, as we officers occa
sionally did, to get a shot at a deer or a bird.
We did not live high that Winter at Rethel,
I can tell you! I never saw Berthine afraid,
however. She simply laughed at the idea of harm
coming her way.

Q7

^ "tttabe in prance." 1?

*'On this particular evening, after the old
rhan had slipped off in the darkness, Berthine
split the wood for that night and the next day;
drew the water, and, after she had fastened the
door, to please her mother, she set about making
soup in the kettle. That is pretty much the
staple diet of those peasants : thin soup for the
poor days, cabbage soup for the rich days. To
night they were to have cabbage soup, so that
they might save something good for the father to
refresh himself with when he got home. And let
me tell you that old mother Pichon and Berthine
made a very good cabbage soup for a hungry
man. It is not to be despised.

"It was just about this time of night when
the two women heard a sound of men marching
close to the house. The old mother was much
alarmed; and she nearly fell off her chair with
fright when she heard a musket-butt rapping on
the door. But Berthine only took her father's
heavy revolver down from the chimney piece and
slipped it into the pocket of her woollen petticoat,
such as our peasants wear; then she listened at
the door. She heard a deep bass voice saying
with a strong German accent, ' Open ! '

" < Who are you ? ' she asked.

" ' Corporal and five privates,' said the Ger
man voice.

"'What do you want?' Berthine demanded.

" ' We have lost our way,' the German
answered, 'and we want to get in. If you don't
open the door we 'II break it in.' (They have no
manners, those Prussians.)

" Berthine had no choice. The door was of
oak, heavy and strong, like everything about the
98

*V ft Capture. V

house; but of course six men could break it in,
and there was nothing to do but to open to them.
When she did so she saw six big bearded fellows

covered with snow, and looking very cold and
uncomfortable.

"'What do you want at this hour of the
night ? ' she asked.

"'We Ve lost our way, I tell you,' said the
corporal, grunting it out in very bad French, 'and
none of us has had anything to eat since the
morning. I remembered passing your house
earlier in the day; but I Ve been two hours find
ing it again.'

" Berthine looked him straight in the face.

"'There is no one here,' she said, 'but my
old mother and myself.'

"The officer was a decent sort of fellow —
for a Prussian.

"'We don't want to hurt you,' he said; 'I
give you my word, we '11 make you no trouble;

8 99

V "IHabe in prance." ^

but we Ve got to have something to eat and
we Ve got to rest. My men are almost dead.'

" ' Come in,' she said, standing back from
the door, and they filed in. They dragged their
heavy feet as if they had hardly strength enough
to take another step, and they were almost too
tired to shake off the snow that covered them.
They sat down wearily on the two benches
between which stood the table.

"'You do look worn out,' said Berthine as
she closed the door after them; 'I '11 make you
some soup ; it 's the best I can do for you.'

" « Anything will do,' said the Prussian,
weariedly.

" The old mother was still spinning, as she
had been when the strangers first knocked. She
had not dared stir from her wheel, but spun on
silently, casting frightened looks at the soldiers
out of the corner of her eye. She need not have
alarmed herself. Hunger and fatigue had made
them tame enough, and they sat like six good
little children on their benches, watching Berthine
make the soup.

" She went about it as coolly and uncon
cernedly as though they had not been present.
She added hot water to increase the volume of
liquid in the kettle, and then made up its richness
by the addition of potatos, more cabbage and a
great piece of salt-pork. The soldiers looked on
as though they could eat it, kettle and all, and it
must have seemed a long time to everyone before
that soup was ready. When it was placed before
them, at last, they fell upon it like half-starved
creatures, taking it in with brutish noises, and
swallowing the potatos, when they came to them,

as though they were strawberries. The privates
said nothing, but the corporal grunted in his
barbarous accent, ' good, good ! ' Finally he
found himself sufficiently fortified to begin to feel
like himself again, and he asked Berthine if there
was anything to drink in the house.

" 'I have only cider,' she answered him.

" ' Give us some ; there 's a good girl,' he said.

" Moving thoughtfully, and with something
in her manner that probably attracted the atten
tion of the officer, Berthine took a big, old-
fashioned key from the wrall, unlocked and opened
the great trap-door in the corner of the room,
and went down the winding stone steps into the
cellar. She was gone a long time ; so long a time
that the corporal grew uneasy, and when a
strange, uncanny sound suddenly broke the still
ness, he drew his revolver quickly and looked
across the room at the old woman. She rose
trembling in affright.

" 'It is only the wolves, sir,' she cried.

"'Wolves!' repeated the corporal, incredu
lously; but he went to the door, and, opening it

t^ "2Ha5e in prance." V

cautiously, looked out and saw the gaunt gray
shapes prowling about in the snow.

"'Well/ he said, good-naturedly, as he
bolted the door and returned to his place, 'I
Would n't have believed it, old woman. We did
better ^than we knew when we paid you this visit,
did n't we?' And he shook his great yellow
bea¥d in laughter at his own joke.

"Berthine came up from the cellar with the
cider, a generous big stone pitcher full, and she
gave it to her uninvited guests with a pleasant
smile upon her face. They had it gulped down
in a minute or two, and twice she re-filled it for
them, each time with a still more pleasant srnile
upon her face; which, let me assure you, my
friend, was a very peculiar thing for a French
peasant woman giving away cider.

"By the time they had finished the third
pitcher, fatigue and their heavy drink had so told
on them that they began to fall asleep where
they sat.

" ' Stretch yourselves out in front of the fire
there,' said Berthine, kindly; 'there 's room enough
for you all. My mother and I will take our
supper over here; and when we are through
we will go up to bed. You 'd better put on
another log.'

"The soldiers stretched themselves out on
the stone floor; the two women made a hasty
meal of what remained of the soup, first secretly
setting aside a portion to be kept for the father;
and then they climbed up the ladder to the garret
that served them as bed-chamber, and left the
lower story to their visitors. The flickering fire
light played on six bearded Prussian faces; the

IP ft Capture. V

oaken rafters thrilled with six different kind of
Prussian snores.

" They had slept long enough to be at
sleep's heaviest, when a gun-shot rang out on the
air seemingly far off, yet so exaggerated in loud-
ness by the sounds of the night that it might have
come from under the very eaves. The six soldiers
leaped to their feet, and stood gazing at each
other in drowsy amazement. Another shot fol
lowed at once, and then, after a longer interval,
two more. Suddenly a form dropped among them
from the low ceiling. It was Berthine, who had
swung herself down through the opening from the
garret, disdaining the help of the ladder. She
held a lighted candle in her hand, and its yellow
flame illuminated her fine figure. She was bare
footed, bare-armed, and clad only in her primitive
peasant's night-dress, a coarse linen chemise and
a short petticoat. Her eyes blazed with anxious
excitement.

" < For heaven's sake, get out of the house ! '
she cried; 'it is the French regiment from the
town — five hundred of them — and if they find
you here they will burn the house over our heads,
and perhaps kill my mother and me for giving you
shelter. Make haste, there is no time to be lost!'
And she moved toward the door.

" The man's face reddened.

" ' How can we go?' he asked sullenly.

'My men would be shot down in a moment.'

And even as he spoke two more shots were heard

close at hand. Berthine cast her eyes about her,

103

^ "H7a5e in prance." ^

as if in desperate search of some way out of the
difficulty.

"'Get down into the cellar, then,' she cried,
hurriedly, 'and keep quiet. I '11 tell you when
they are gone.'

" She raised the heavy trap-door. The cor
poral grinned with delight, slapped her cordially
on the shoulder, called her a clever girl; and the
six men, with their guns and overcoats, filed noise
lessly down the winding stone stairs. As the spike
of the last helmet disappeared from sight, Ber-
thine let down the trap-door quickly and silently,
and the moment it was down she leaped upon
it with cat-like rapidity, and, leaning over, gave
the key two quick turns. Then, with her strong
forefinger, she cleaned the dust and dirt of the
floor out of two bolt heads at the sides of the
trap, and shot the rusty bolts.
104

Capture.

L

" She stood erect as her mother came down
the ladder, climbing with nervous clutches at the
rounds, for in one skinny hand she held her hus
band's big revolver, still smoking and smelling of
powder. It was she who had been detailed to
fire out of the furthest window of the
garret the shots from the heavy
weapon which had sounded like
the reports of a distant musket.
She stood bent and trem
bling, looking at her daugh
ter, while Berthine, with her
hands on her broad hips, twist
ed and swayed and writhed
in a convulsion of silent
laughter.-

" Berthine returned to

her garret, slipped on her dress and came back
to the lower room. In silence she and her mother
began to warm up the soup they had secreted;
for it was getting to be time for the father's
return. But it was not long before the sound
of voices under their feet told them that the
suspicions of their captives had been awakened.
Then the butt of a gun thwacked against the
under side of the trap-door, and the corporal's
guttural voice called upon them to open. Ber
thine deigned no response to this command. She
was not a woman to waste words ; she knew well
that hammering down a front-door was one thing,
and striking up a heavy bolted trap another;
and that there was no other opening into that

TOJ

^ "IHabe in prance." V

cellar of thick masonry save one little grated
slit made for ventilation.

" ' Open ! ' came the muffled voice of the
Prussian, 'or 1 '11 break the door.'

" ' Break all you want to, my lad,' said
Berthine pleasantly, as she stirred the soup.

" Berthine was big, healthy and magnani
mous. It was her little, old, wrinkled mother,
who all these hours had cowered in silent fear,
who now burst into a tempest of raging triumph.
Crouching over the trap, she hurled gross insults
down at her daughter's captives, calling them
hogs and wolves and robbers, imitating their gut
tural accents, and mocking their bad French. In
the end, when her voice failed her, she grasped
her skirts in both hands, pulled them up to the
level of her knees, and danced a really prepos
terous jig of the early days of her youth. She
subsequently re-enacted the whole scene for my
benefit; and I assure you that if a Chinese idol
came to life, it could not do anything more gro
tesque or surprising.

" She stopped exhausted as Berthine raised
a warning hand. Afar in the woods sounded a
strange note, like the screech-owl's, yet, to a
forester's ear, unlike. The two women heard it
in spite of the hubbub that the prisoners made,
beating on the stone ceiling and firing their guns
through the grating, to attract the attention of
any comrades who might be in search of them.
Berthine put her head out of the door and
answered with the same cry. It came back
again, and again she answered it. Two great
dogs burst out of the darkness and leaped upon
her, caressing her and whining with pleasure.

rod

She held them firmly by their broad leather
collars, and called to her father, whose tall form
could be seen emerging from the thicket.

u < Don't pass in front of the grating ! The
cellar is full of Prussians ! '

" The old man changed his course and
entered the house. He gave the two women no
further greeting than to repeat interrogatively r

" 'The cellar is full of Prussians?'

" ' Yes,' said his daughter, calmly.

"He sat down at the table; she placed his,
soup before him, and he ate steadily on with the
stolid gravity of a peasant, while his daughter
told her story, punctuated by the blows of
musket-butts beneath the floor, and the crash
of shots fired through the grated slit. The smell
of the powder-smoke mingled with the scent of
the hot soup and the pungent aroma of the wood-

V "2Tta6e in prance." V

fire. The story and the soup were finished to
gether. The old man made no comment what
ever. He merely said, 'What shall I do now?'
and, as he waited for his daughter's reply, wiped
up the soup in the bottom of the kettle with
crusts of rye bread, which he fed to his dogs.

" 'Go back to town,' said his daughter, 'and
notify the Lieutenant.'

" And so I was notified. It was not much
over an hour-and-a-half later when that tireless
old man reached the gates of Rethel, where the
outpost brought him in. In ten minutes the call
to arms was sounding in every direction ; the bells
rang, and the whole town was topsy-turvy. The
militia rushed to the public square and fell in line,
with a terrible amount of noise. We Frenchmen
— noise is to us what a good drink of whiskey is
to you.

"They really did very well, however. Had
they been regulars they could hardly have been
much more prompt in getting off; and so we
went marching through the forest singing and
hurrahing, as though we were celebrating the
defeat of the whole Prussian army, instead of the
trapping of five privates and a corporal in a
peasant girl's cellar.

"As we drew near the scene of action I
stopped their noise, of course; and it was that
march through the silent snow-covered forest that
impressed 'Berthine's Night' on my mind. There
was something ghastly about it. At one point in
a great clearing the road doubled on itself, to

foS

climb a steep hill. As we reached the top of the
double and looked down to the place where our
ascent had begun, fifteen minutes before, we could
see that the steadily falling snow had already
obliterated our footprints. It was like a white
sea that crawled behind us, covering up every
trace of our passage.

"When we reached the cottage all was still
and silent. If it had not been for the smell of
powder in the air, I should hardly have believed
in the existence of the captive Prussians. Berthine
opened the door and stood upon the sill, calm
and unmoved as though her father had not
brought a delegation of two hundred French
soldiers home with him. I do not know how
those long and trying hours of waiting had gone
with her; but if they had troubled her placid
spirit, she gave no sign. Standing in the door
way, she repeated her warning to every one who
approached :

" < Don't get in front of the grating ! '
" The soldiers were drawn up a couple of
hundred feet from the house, and bonfires were
lighted for warmth and light. I entered the house,

JOQ

1^ "UTabe in prance." V

and going to the trap-door I addressed the silent
cellar.

" 'Is there a Prussian officer there?'
" There might have been no one at all there
for any answer I got. Again and again I address
ed the invisible, but no sound came back through
the floor. I offered that corporal all the bless
ings of an honorable surrender, but he gave no
sign in answer.

*« Meanwhile something was going on outside
that I should not have approved of. My men, of
course, were standing at ease. That is to say,
they were running, jumping and stamping to keep
their feet warm. Finally some daredevil had dis
covered that infernal grating, and nothing would
do him but he must run across its range, as a boy
might run across the danger-space in the game
that we call barres in France — you call it
prisoner's base, I think. This struck some of the
others as a most amusing sport, and the more
fleet-footed kept it up for a while, without drawing
the enemy's fire. Then there carne along a little
fat, round baker, named Malet, who was generally
called the Bun, on account of his shape. They
dared the Bun to make the trial; and, of course,
he did it, with a funny little trot that made the
men laugh. He had got nearly out of range,
when a flash of fire shot from the grating, and
Malet went over on his back with a kick and a
howl, throwing his own gun over his head. It
struck a stone and went off. Its muzzle pointed
almost straight at the grating. We conjectured that
it hit somebody, for an exclamation came from
the cellar, but whether of rage or pain we could
not make out. Malet crawled and rolled out of

TP (I Capture. V

danger. He was wounded in his thigh; but not
badly. When I had reformed our lines and left
Malet in the surgeon's hands, I returned to the
cottage for a council of war, and
found Berthine still standing in
the doorway, looking at the
picturesque scene — the sol
diers, the snow, the great
fires, the gleaming arms —
with the indifferent curiosity
of a well-fed cow.

" ' Well, my girl,' I said,
'this is a pretty piece of busi
ness. You got your men in
the cellar ; but how are we to get them out ? '

" She answered me in her matter-of-fact way :

"'They drank up all our cider last night,
why don't you give them a drink of water now ? '

" ' What do you mean ? ' I asked.

"'There is the pump,' she said, pointing to
it ; ' and there are gutters under all the eaves of the
house. You can take them down and use them.
But you should put them back again.'

" That was all the council of war. In ten
minutes those gutters were down, stretched from
an auger-hole which we made in the trap door,
through the window, to the nozzle of the big
wooden pump. Three men ranged themselves on
each side of the long handle, and in a short time
the current of clear icy water was rushing down
the line of wooden troughs and pouring a steady
stream into the cellar.

"The cellar was small and shallow; but, as
you know, it takes a long time to fill even the
smallest of cellars through an auger-hole. The

V "tffabe in prance." V

snow had stopped, and the East was red with
morning, before we heard from that cave of gloom
any other sound than the steady fall of the water.
B-r-r-r! but it was shivering cold, that water!
Then we heard the hoarsest Prussian voice that
ever was dreamed of, say through the grating:

« « Mr. Officer ! '

" The corporal desired to surrender. At my
orders he passed the arms of the detachment up
through the grating, simply remarking :

" 'Make haste, I am dying; and my men are
nearly drowned.'

"We opened the trap-door, and the cor
poral's head appeared, pale and ghastly. Two of
his men were supporting him. Malet's fallen gun
had actually shot him, and straight through the
body.

" When we had warmed our prisoners so that
they could walk, we started back for Rethel, carry

ing the wounded Bun on a stretcher. The injured
Prussian we left behind us, as our surgeon
reported him too dangerously hurt to be moved
at present.

^ ft Capture. V

"This happened in the latter part of January ;
and it was that very day, by chance, that the
Prussian troops in our neighborhood were ordered
to Paris. This was fortunate for Berthine and her
family, and was probably the only thing, that
saved them from the vengeance of the invaders;
for when the Prussians learned what had become
of their scouting expedition, they were as wild
with rage as we, in Rethel, were with exultation.

"The little town went fairly mad with a
frenzy of pride and enthusiasm; and the good
people of Rethel were quite as silly and extrava
gant as — well, as any community that has lost
its head over a woman. They got up a popular
subscription and gave Berthine Pichon a sum
of money; I have forgotten how much, but it
was a large sum for the time and place. The
family was presented with the thanks of the town
in a silver casket, and Berthine received from the
Municipality a cask of rare old wine, to which, I
suppose, she preferred her own cider. The Pom
piers — Fire Department, that is — sent her a
mantel-piece clock with an alabaster pump on it,
and she had a medal or testimonial from every
religious society in the city. And when the war
ended, in February, and I was ordered away from
Rethel, the Berthine fever had reached such a
height that they were talking about establishing
an annual festival in her honor.

"It was not a time for festivals, however,
and the absurd scheme was abandoned ; but when
I came back to Rethel, early in April, the excite
ment had broken out in a new form, and I found
a most curious dispute referred to me for decision.
I could hardly believe my ears when I heard that
* '3

V "ItTabe in prance." ^

the Maire of the town and my old friend Malet,
the wounded baker, the Bun, were quarrelling as
to which should marry Berthine Pichon, a girl
who could not read or write. I ventured to sug
gest that she was hardly a match for either of the
well-to-do and highly respectable townspeople,
but they were quite indignant over it.

"'She is of the aristocracy of patriotism,'
said Malet.

"'She is another Joan of Arc/ said the
Maire.

"As ex-commandant, I was forced to settle
between them. I decided in favor of both; sug
gesting that they should make their offers in order
of seniority, and leave it to Berthine to express
her personal preferences, if she had any. My
decision was regarded as novel and original, but
perfectly satisfactory.

" But I did not know what I had let myself
in for, until the Maire insisted that I should drive
with him in state to demand of Nicolas Pichon
the hand of his daughter. And, my friend, I
had to go; and I must tell you how we went.

" I have lived so long in America now that
I can understand how impossibly ridiculous it
must seem to you; but at the time I was only
mildly amused when I found myself rolling
through the forest in a big open carriage, con
ducted by a liveried coachman and footman. I
was in full uniform, and I sat by the side of the
Maire, who was in evening dress — yes, in
swallow-tail coat and white kid gloves, at eleven
o'clock in the morning. That 's the way they
do it in France when they go to make a formal
offer of marriage — not addressed to the young

lady herself, you know, but to the young lady's
papa. On the front seat were two gorgeously
caparisoned beadles, borrowed from the Cathedral
to lend state and dignity to the occasion. Oh, I
wish I could have been as much of an American
then as I am now, to have been able to realize
how funny we were, that carriage -load, as we
swept grandly along the high-road through the
forest, where the trees were just beginning to turn
green and yellow with Spring, and the young
frogs were piping in the marshes, and the sun
shone on us in all our glory !

"When we came to the historic cottage, old
Pichon was chopping wood before the door. He
looked up at us sullenly, and without saying a
word went on with his task. The footman de
scended and announced the Maire of the City
of Rethel. Then the old man looked up, with
insolent rage glaring out of his little eyes.

" 'To the devil with your city of Rethel! It
has cost me my daughter; and now I must chop
wood in my old age ! '

g '15

^ "Ittabe in prance." ^

" < Cost you your daughter ? ' stammered the
Maire, bewildered.

"'Yes,' said the old man; < you Ve set her
crazy among you with your nonsense; and now
she and her clock and the silver box and the
money you gave her — all the money — all the
money, do you hear ? — they have all gone with
that cursed Prussian who was to have died and
did n't.'

" It was true. The modern Joan of Arc had
fallen in love with the captive who had been left
with her to be nursed; and as she could never
have dared marry him openly, and face the wrath
of her fellow-citizens, she had slipped away with
him by night, not forgetting to take with her the
rewards of her patriotism.

"We afterwards heard," concluded Gaston,
stopping to refill his pipe as we reached the
edge of the woods, and saw the lights of our
destination glimmering ahead of us far down
the misty valley, pale through the silent-falling
snow, "that the corporal rejoined the Prussian
army, and got his discharge and a present of
money, for having turned the laugh on us; and
that the married pair emigrated to Canada, and
have done very well for themselves. And this
night, my friend, — this night is exactly like
Berthine's night, la nuit a Berthine, — and this
snow will stop just as the sky begins to grow
red."

And it did.

UNCLE ATTICUS.

UNCLE ATTICUS.

CCASIONALLY, in the quarter of an
hour that comes just before the third
meal of the day, and that the liberal-
minded sometimes punctuate with a cock
tail, the home-seeking toilers of a busy

little provincial city in a New England state
were treated to a strange and puzzling spectacle.

Along the crowded main thoroughfare of the
town a man of imposing mien would stalk, appar
ently in busy haste. He wore a black broadcloth
coat with long flapping lapels; a waistcoat that
was sometimes white and always rumpled; a
seldom renewed white tie was hidden by his
spreading grayish beard which lay all over his
broad breast and reached to his ample stomach.
As this gentleman passed the door of a certain
liquor saloon in his hurried and preoccupied
advance, the swinging portals slowly opened and
another gentleman appeared in the doorway, a
large man, also, and with a white waistcoat, but
there all the resemblance ended. This man's
waistcoat was immaculately clean, and the rest of
his attire was that of a prosperous business man
who patronizes a good tailor. This gentleman
had closely trimmed mutton-chop whiskers, a red

118

nose and an expression, naturally jovial, which
changed to that of an infuriated cherub, as he
shook a fat, durnpy fist at the back of the fast-
disappearing man with a beard ; and cursed him
in language of the strongest opprobrium. Then
behind this person would appear a third, a slim
young man, very correctly and quietly dressed, a
man with a small moustache and a cold and cyni
cal eye, who gently lured the elder man back into
the barroom with sage and soothing whispers.
And if, as he terminated this peculiar scene by
coaxing the stout gentleman back within the
swinging doors, a quiet smile lit up the faces of
the passers-by, and was somewhat coldly reflected
in his own, both he and they felt that the nephew
of Uncle Atticus could well afford that smile.

This sight was no mystery to the town's-
people. The unconscious object of the mutton-

V "2TTd6e in prance." V

chop-whiskered man's wrath was the Rev. Mr.
Seedley Studder, an evangelical missionary to the
heathen, of great popularity and prominence in
his own sect, temporarily on collection duty in
Wakeham. The man with the whiskers was Mr.
Q. P. Atticus Jarbey, the millionaire manufacturer
of shovels, who was called a good fellow by his
friends, and a scoffer by the church-going popula
tion. The third was his only nephew and his
chosen boon-companion, Theodore.

Mr. Jarbey, or Uncle Atticus, as the whole
town called him, was rather more than a mere
scoffer. He was a man with an anti-religious
mania. He hated all creeds and all confessions,
and, curiously enough, he hated the various
religions in the ratio of the popularity and simpli
city of their observances. That is to say, while
he held all religious sects to be enemies of those
principles of pure reason and mature judgement
in the choice of spirituous licmor by which he
sought to guide his own mortal existence, he
could respect as open foes such as declared their
hostility by uniforms and other outward signs;
whereas those who were in the livery of the world,
yet concealed a pious creed within their breast, he
regarded as hypocritical counterfeiters of honest
worldliness.

"When a man puts on a red night-gown,"
said Mr. Jarbey, oratorically, "and goes sashaying
up and down in front of a painted statue, why,
you know what to expect of him. But when a
man like that nigger-hunting parson there can
grow a beard such as he 's got, and raise a belly
such as he 's got, why, I expect to find a man like
that coming out with the boys and taking his tod

TT Uncle fltticus. ^

sociable and friendly and with no cussed nonsense
about it. And when I find that he ain't — when
I find that he 's concealing the principles of reli
gion under an exterior like that — why, I want to
pulverize him. I '11 eat my hat if I don't!"
And Mr. Jarbey pounded savagely on the bar.
"What's that? Oh, yes; same again, Charles.
See what these gentlemen '11 have."

Being a wealthy bachelor retired from busi
ness, Mr. Jarbey had of course to have something
to interest him in life, and his two chief joys were
anti-clerical demonstrations and reckless indul
gence in spasmodic bursts of gluttony. He drank
all the time; but so steady, regular, and well-estab
lished was the habit with him, that his system

seemed to have accustomed itself to it, all except
his nose — which day by day took on a more
genial glow. It was in his consumption of food
that he went on regular sprees, filling himself with
rich and highly spiced edibles and eating himself,
so to speak, to a standstill. Then a terrible attack
of indigestion and dyspepsia would reduce him to
a physical wreck, and frighten him into observing

f "ITlabc in prance." V

a brief period of temperance ; leaving him after a
little, to resume a way of life that was certainly
not characteristic of a consistent rationalist. To
head off these gluttonous outbursts, or to mitigate
in some measure the direful consequences of them,
was Nephew Theodore's principal walk in life,
although he also went through the form of keeping
up a not very exacting law practice. As a lawyer
Theodore Jarbey may have been of small account,
but as a guardian comrade, and promoter of
moderation, the cool-blooded and well-instructed
youth performed his duties with the unflagging
zeal of an assured inheritor who can well afford
to bide his time.

Theodore was more than suspected of foster
ing his Uncle's irreligious tendencies, in order to
keep the elder man's mind occupied; and when
the Daughters of Temperance, the Society for
Religious Advancement and the Light -Bearers'
League held their united six-days' convention in
Wakeham, Theodore did not lose the opportunity
to stir up Mr. Jarbey's wrath against the flood of
proselyting females that swept down upon the
town.

Now it may not seem to most people that
there is anything to excite great rage in the sight
of a couple of thousand enthusiastic ladies bust
ling about, with no worse purpose in view than to
hold meetings, sing hymns, denounce the Demon
Drink, and save the lost souls of their fellow-
mortals. But there are bigots who call themselves
rationalists as well as bigots who call themselves
Christians, and the generally good-natured soul
of Mr. Jarbey fairly sizzled within him, when he
saw the streets of the town invaded by these

V Uncle fltticus. ^

daughters of righteousness — and certainly they
were not quite so attractive to look at as some of
their more worldly sisters. Perhaps it was the
badges that irritated Mr. Jarbey; for it must be
confessed that silk and celluloid badges are irri
tating to some dispositions. Perhaps it was the
dresses, the best of which were, as Theodore
remarked, pretty quisby. Whatever it was, it so
worked on Mr. Jarbey 's spirit that he felt he had
to take some steps to counteract the evil influence.
Warfare upon the women themselves being out of
the question, Mr. Jarbey resolved on holding the
Rev. Mr. Studder responsible for what he called
" the whole caboodle," and challenging him to
any sort of public combat he might elect, from a
street-fight to a rifle-duel. It was with difficulty
made clear to Mr. Jarbey that this plan was not
feasible, and he sulked for two days. At the end
of this time, he announced to Theodore and the
rest of his companions at McGinty's gilded bar,
that "he 'd got an act that would do 'em."
Against the half-hearted remonstrances of his
friends, and the only too sincere and fervent pro
testations of his nephew, Mr. Jarbey proceeded to
carry his plan into effect.

It was on Saturday night, the night of the
"Great Double Memorial Meeting in Remem
brance of the Martyred Missionaries of the Sand
wich Islands and Seringapatam" that at half-past
five in the afternoon the first installment of the
Daughters of Temperance went into Fitts's Res
taurant to get their supper. Mr. Fitts had the
only restaurant and ice-cream saloon of any size
or standing in Wakeham, and it was not a very
spacious establishment, being the ordinary long,
123

y "ITCabc in prance." T

narrow room of that sort of little-city restaurant
which affects tables covered with marbled enamel-
cloth, and clock-work wooden fans which swing
slowly and uselessly around, while the flies sit on
them and record their impressions. At the back,
a few steps led up to a private room where Mr.
Fitts could, and did, on certain occasions, enter
tain his wealthier guests with suppers where he
served oysters and terrapin and canvas-back duck
that had undoubtedly stopped in
New York on their way up from
Maryland. Mr. Fitts had taken
the contract for feeding several
hundreds of the feminine army;
and the limited resources of his
place obliged him to take them in installments,
fifty or so at a time, snatching those hurried, mot
ley meals that women love — tomato-soup, a cup
of chocolate, ice-cream and chatter being the
usual formula. The first delegation that entered,
on this evening consecrated to mourning remem
brance, came in and sat down, all talking at once.
They stopped suddenly in their agreeable con
versation, and a hush of horror came upon the
assemblage, as they heard roars of masculine mer
riment issuing from the back-room, saw two per
spiring waiters staggering in with a tub of ice
stuck thick with champagne bottles, and then,
looking up, saw Uncle Atticus Jarbey leading six
other godless but convivial sinners in a baccha
nalian orgie that bid fair to be, as he had prom
ised to make it, " the highest old time anybody
ever had in the town of Wakeham."

Uncle Atticus kept his promise. All that
evening, as new installments of the fair children
124

of righteousness continued to appear and got
mixed up with the scattered and disorganized
groups of earlier arrivals, a throng of excited and
generally flustered women surged in and out of
Fitts's restaurant, shrilly protesting against the
outrage of being forced to witness such a scandal,
and driving the head-waiter nearly frantic in his
endeavors to explain to them that in the una
voidable absence of Mr. Fitts — who had happened
to go, that morning, to Siberia or South America,
or some other equally inaccessible place, for a
day's fishing — he, the head -waiter, could do
nothing except to serve both lines of custom
according to orders. Some of the bolder spirits
among the Daughters and Light Bearers con
ceived a scheme for getting ahead of the mam
mon of unrighteousness by buying up Fitts's stock
of champagne and pouring it into the gutter.
Uncle Atticus roared with delight when the news
was brought to him, and sent for telegraph blanks
to order champagne by special train from New
York and Boston ; while the more practical head-
waiter privily sent out a boy to notify all the
saloon-keepers in the neighborhood to put every
drop of fizz they had on the ice without delay.
125

Y* "ZlTabc in prance/' V

They might have spared themselves their pre
cautions, however. The first lady in the cham
pagne-spilling syndicate seized a bottle by the
neck and pounded it down on the curb-stone as
though she was smashing in the head of the
whole Rum-Power at one glorious blow. Then
the waiter gave her a check for three dollars and
fifty cents, and she fainted.

Fitts's front room had long been empty, save
for drowsy waiters and hackmen; and the virtuous
flock of temperance were all in bed and asleep
when Mr. Atticus Jarbey's "high time" came to
an end by ignominiously prostrating Mr. Jarbey
on the floor, helpless, agonized, and gasping in a
severe attack of indigestion. His nephew, and
another member of the merry company, who had
kept sober for that purpose, took the foe of reli
gion home; and with great difficulty got him to
bed, and left him lying there, inert, uncomfortable,
frightened and wretched in bocly and mind. When
they got outside the door, the other good Samaritan
suggested the employment of a physician; but
Theodore would not hear of it. His uncle, he
knew, had hardly more liking for doctors than for
divines; and, moreover, he himself had secretly
made inquiries of a specialist in dyspepsia, which
satisfied him that his uncle's attacks, though they
certainly were disagreeable and annoying, were in
nowise alarming in their nature. So the two
parted, and Theodore set out for his own home.

Something in the cool night -air set the
moderate quantity of champagne which he had
drunk to working within his brain. Now that
his immediate responsibility and care were at an
end he could enjoy the absurdity of the evening,

V Uncle fltttcus. V

and give himself up to the pleasant exhilaration
of the sparkling wine.

It was this exhilaration that put an idea into
his head — a wild idea for a brain which was
usually an uncommonly cool and calculating organ
of thought. He grinned sardonically as he turned
that idea over in the brain. After a moment, he
crossed the street and furiously rang the bell and
madly pounded on the front door of the Rev. Mr.
Seedley Studder, until that able missionary to the
heathen made his appearance, looming gigantic
in a yellow flannel dressing-gown.

"The Rev. Mr. Studder, I believe?" de
manded Theodore hurriedly.

"Yes, sir," replied the missionary, staring
hard at his visitor. It was a strange face to him

— which was not unnatural under the circum
stances.

"You are the clergyman, — the missionary,

— who came here some time ago from South
America?"

"From South Africa," corrected Mr. Studder.

"Yes, certainly," Theodore cheerfully as
sented, unabashed; "well, you 're wanted right
away across the road, five doors down, Mr. At-
ticus Jarbey. He 's very sick and wants to see
you at once."

"Mr. Atticus Jarbey?" repeated the clergy
man, perplexed; "why, I thought, — I thought he
was not — "

"Not religious? Well, he was n't, very
much," replied Theodore, calmly, "but he 's dying
now; and I guess he's changed his mind. At
any rate he wants you, the worst way, and you 'd
better go quick."

727

"2Ha6e tn prance."

The Rev. Mr. Studder's face lit up and he
rubbed his hands almost gleefully.

" I '11 be with you in a moment," he said.

"Not with me" Theodore re
turned, promptly; "I 'm going
for the doctor. You see, I' m
of the other way of thinking,
myself, governor. I don't
believe I 'd add any lustre
to the occasion."

"Very well," said
the clergyman, frowning
sternly; "whom shall I
say told me to come ? "

"I guess you need
n't mention my name,
dominie," said his visitor,
with a knowing wink.
"Might complicate mat
ters in the family. Call
me a seraphic visitor, or
a celestial messenger-boy
or anything you want to.
But man alive ! " he concluded,
in tones of astonished rebuke, "you want to
hurry up, or you '11 be too late." And he sped
off down the street.

The Rev. Mr. Studder hurried into his
clothes and crossed the street to the silent man
sion of Mr. Jarbey, where only a pale night-lamp
glowed in the great room on the second floor.

"What a horrible thing," thought the Rever
end gentleman, "for that godless old man, if he
is as godless as I have been told — to die
attended only by that graceless reprobate!"
128

V Uncle fttttcus. V

From a recessed doorway further along the
street, Theodore watched the missionary disappear
into the house of Uncle Atticus. He grinned in
his malicious, half-intoxicated glee as he tried to
picture to himself the encounter that was about
to take place. Under ordinary circumstances it
would probably have resulted in battle, murder,
and the sudden death of the missionary. But
Uncle Atticus was absolutely paralyzed by the
attack of indigestion. He could hardly move
hand or foot ; he had no means of defense left to
him but his large and varied vocabulary of objur
gation. Theodore ran over in his mind the long
list of his uncle's explosions of unhallowed rage,
and reflected, with profound satisfaction, on the
probability that this one would be wcrse than
any one of which the old man had hitherto been
guilty.

But five minutes — ten minutes — a quarter
of an hour passed and no sound came from the
great square mansion of yellow brick. The night
was growing sharp and chill. Theodore emerged
from his hiding-place and began to walk up and
down in the middle of the roadway, casting
anxious and expectant glances at his uncle's
house; but no sound disturbed the calm silence
of the moonlight night,, until the bell of the town
clock struck four, and Theodore realized that
nearly three-quarters of an hour had elapsed since
his uncle's hall-door had closed behind the broad
shoulders of the missionary.

He began to be disturbed in mind, and

before long he was both mystified and worried.

What had happened ? Had Uncle Atticus gone

off in a faint, or suddenly died at the apparition

129

If "tftabe in prance." y

of a clergyman in the very chamber of infidelity ?
Had he killed the missionary ? Had the mission
ary killed him ? The state of his uncle's digestion
forbade the supposition that the two had eaten
each other, or otherwise Theodore would have
accepted this as the only likely solu
tion of the problem. For another
long hour the unhappy nephew of
Uncle Atticus cooled his heels in
the damp, dank morning air. He
dared not enter the house and find
out for himself what had happened,
for that would have committed him
to an acknowledgment of his par
ticipation in the matter; and he had
no notion whatever of confessing his
guilt, should it appear that any un
pleasant consequences had been the
outcome of his practical joke. Theo
dore was not that kind of young
man.

Finally, when five o'clock rang
out upon the chill air, Theodore real
ized the necessity of taking further steps.
Nearly opposite his uncle's mansion lived a young
gentleman of Theodore's kidney, who came as
near as any one could to being Theodore's chum.
This gentleman's name was Nathaniel Gillup, and
he slept on the ground floor of a little wing of
his father's house that gave on two streets — an
apartment eminently convenient of nocturnal ac
cess. A signal familiar to the two young men
brought Mr. Gillup promptly to the window; .and
in a few minutes, Theodore, wrapped in his friend's
blankets, was telling with chattering teeth the story
130

V Uncle fltttcus. V

of the night. Mr. Gillup was deeply interested.
In the pauses of his friend's narrative, he repeat
edly uttered the common or garden name of the
place of departed wicked spirits; and when the
recital had come to an end, he nimbly but noise
lessly executed a complicated dance-step, known
to the profane as a domino; and said cheerfully,
as he put on a bath-robe of gorgeous dye :

"This is a lark. Take a nip of whiskey and
get into my bed, and I '11 sit here at the window
and spell you for a while."

Mr. Gillup's vigil was faithful but futile. Six
o'clock came and seven, but the home of Mr.
Jarbey was still wrapped in silence. Then,
apprehensive that he might be keeping watch on
a house of death, Mr. Gillup wakened the weary
Theodore to an aching head, and the two young
men sat and stared from behind the blinds at the
big yellow house. It was with unspeakable relief
that they saw at last the beginning of the usual
daily life of the establishment. The blinds were
opened by Mr. Jarbey's solitary domestic, who
moved about naturally, as if nothing strange had
happened.

"Can't we go over and get old Hetty to give
us a tip on the sly ? " suggested Mr. Gillup.

" Not on your life ! " cried Theodore, in
alarm. " The old woman positively hates me ;
and she 's smarter than any ten steel traps. No,
sir; the only thing to do is to wait and watch.
He never gets up Sundays till twelve, even when
he 's well; and he does n't like to have any one
come in the house till he 's smoked a couple of
pipes and feels just right — about two or three in
the afternoon."

IT «mabe in prance." V

The young men took turns in watching
throughout the morning, Theodore impelled by a
gnawing fear and anxiety, and Gillup by curiosity
and the delight of sharing in a mystery. It was
nearly two o'clock when the front door opened
and the missionary appeared, and crossed the
street to his own house. He bore no signs of
excitement or disorder; on the contrary, he had
the tranquil air of a man satisfied with the world
and with himself. Theodore took a stiff drink
of whiskey from his friend's bottle, and hurried
nervously to his uncle's bedside.

Uncle Atticus lay in his old-fashioned four-
poster bed, pale, except as to the extreme tip of
his nose, and wearing an expression of gloomy
dejection.

"Well, Uncle," his nephew addressed him, as
naturally and cheerfully as he could, which was
neither very naturally or very cheerfully, " how do
you feel this morning ? I was in hopes I 'd find
you up and about by this time."

Uncle Atticus shook his head as one does
who hears a grave subject lightly discussed.

" I come mighty near dying last night, Theo
dore," he said solemnly. "You may not know it,
Theodore, but since you left me I Ve been a
mighty sick man — an almighty sick man."

There was a suggestion of reproach in the
phrase "since you left me," and Theodore has
tened to excuse himself.

" Well, of course," he said, " I saw you were
suffering from one of your attacks of indigestion."

"Indi-hell — there, don't you get me to
swear, Theodore. I suppose you think there ain't
ever anything worse the matter with people than
132

indigestion ? Well, now let me tell you there 's
some things you don't know in this world, young
man. There 's two or three things you Ve got
to learn yet. I come just as near dying last night
as ever I did in rny life. I had an attack, after
you fellows went away, that was worse than any
thing I ever thought a man could live through."

Theodore felt his spirits beginning to return.
" What sort of an attack was it, Uncle ? " he
inquired.

" I don't know, I don't know," said Mr.
Jarbey, shaking his head ; " it was something
between cholera and pneumonia, I should think;
may be a little of both. And I 'd have died here
in my bed — died here alone — yes, sir — alone
133

V "ITTabe in prance." V

— if it had n't been for the mercy of Divine
Providence."

" Hey ! " gasped Theodore.

"Yes, sir," repeated Mr. Jarbey impressively;
"the mercy of Divine Providence. Oh, you may
well open your ears! There 's nothing like it.
As true as I 'm layin' here — as true as I 'm
layin' here, Theodore — there 's be'n a miracle
worked in this house ! "

He reached out a fevered hand, caught the
wrist of the amazed young man, and pulled him
closer, while his voice dropped to an awe-struck
whisper as he went on.

"Say! you know that missionary — that man
with a beard — Mr. Studder? I did n't used to
like him exactly — you know. Well, that man
had a revelation last night,"

" A rev — what ? " stammered Theodore.

"A revelation ; yes, sir; a revelation, like they
had in the back part of the Bible. A vision from
heaven come to that man and said I was sick,
and left all alone here, and needed him the worst
way. And what does that man do, Theodore? —
what does that Christian gentleman do — but get
right into his pants, and come over here and take
care of me the whole night long ? Why he
could n't have done more for me if he 'd been
my own brother ! "

Theodore struggled with an intense desire to
laugh, but controlled himself after a moment.

" You seem to take kindly to religious
society, Uncle," he said, with ironical bitterness in
his tone.

Uncle Atticus released his nephew's wrist,
and looked a little confused as he replied :
134

V" Uncle (rftticus. T?

" 'T wa' n't a question of religion, Theodore,"
he said. " 'T was a question of life and death.
And I tell you, Theodore, that man took right
good care of me. You see, those missionaries —
may be you don't know it, Theodore, but they
have to study medicine just like any regular
doctor; and I guess there 's some of 'm knows as
much as most doctors. Anyway, he saved my
life. I would n't be here now talking to you,
Theodore, if- it wa' n't for that man."

"He seems to have made a night of it."

"I hope you '11 never have to go through
such a night, Theodore."

This was said in a tone of deep reproach.

" He stuck right by me through it all,
though," went on Uncle Atticus, " and he would

n't even go home to breakfast — just sat right
down there on a chair at the foot of the bed, and
et something off the washstand. I was feeling
so bad I could n't take anything, only a cocktail.
Hetty makes a first-class cocktail. Did me good."
135

in prance." V

" Did the missionary have a cocktail, Uncle ? "
inquired Theodore.

" Now, that 's what I don't like about you,
Theodore," said his uncle with considerable irrita
tion. " You don't know where to stop. He 's got
his convictions and /'ve got mine. And if I don't
go quite so far as he does, why that 's no reason
why I should n't respect his notions of what 's
right and proper."

This time Theodore was nearly stricken
dumb. It was some time before he could mur
mur an apology.

" I did n't mean anything," he said, in a
bewildered manner. " Of course I feel that way
myself. I respect — I respect — everybody," he
concluded vaguely and weakly.

An awkward silence reigned for a minute.

"Did you find him — a pleasant talker?"
Theodore hazarded at last.

" First-rate, first-rate," his uncle answered,
more agreeably. "A man who 's been out in the
world so much as he has, and seen so much,
could n't help being an interesting talker. Makes
an elegant prayer, too — and oh, yes — what was
I going to say ? Oh% yes ! He lent me a book to
read, too. Real interesting book. You 'd ought to
read it, Theodore." And Uncle Atticus hurriedly
and somewhat confusedly produced from under
the bed-clothes a small black book bearing on its
cover in showy gilt a picture of a crown skewered
on a palm-leaf, and an African war-spear.

" A religious book ! " exclaimed Theodore,
in undisguised amazement.

" Why, yes — no ! It 's the < Historical Ac
count of the South African Missions,' Why, no,

TT Uncle fltticus. V

I would n't say it was exactly a religious book —
it 's more a sort of a kind of book of travels and
adventures. I tell you, you may say what you
like, Theodore, those folks have done a lot of
good in those barbarous countries."

Theodore knit his brows as he looked at his
uncle, and asked quietly :

" When is the Reverend Mr. Studder coming
to see you again, Uncle ? "

"I don't know — I don't know; may be
he '11 look in to-morrow, just to see how I am,"
answered Uncle Atticus in some confusion. " He
said he guessed I 'd better not talk to anybody
much mere to-day — might make me tired, and
put me back."

Great minds sometimes conquer misfortunes
by temporary submission ; but Theodore's mind,
though it was keen enough, had no elements of
greatness.

" Good-afternoon, Uncle," he said ; and then
he could not resist giving the renegade one vicious
thrust. " I suppose you don't know yet," he said,
" the date when they '11 receive you into the
Church ? "

His uncle made a rapid movement of anger,
and seized the pillow; then, controlling himself,
he turned his back, and, with hands trembling
with rage, tried to re-arrange his bed and settle
himself for a nap.

" No, I don't know," he said, savagely; " but
I '11 tell you what I do know. I do know who left
me here to die all alone. And I do know who
saved my life. No, I don't want you to fix that
pillow for me ! But I '11 tell you what you can do :
you can send Hetty to me, as you go out, and you

can shut the front door so 's it won't slam. Good-
day — Good-day."

Uncle Atticus has had no return of his at
tacks of indigestion since he joined the church
and the prohibition party, and married a Shining
Light among the Daughters of Temperance. As
he has also resumed business, and is making
money with great rapidity, his sanity is unques
tioned. Theodore is attending to his law practice
more than he used to.

THE PETT1BONE 'BROLLY.

THE PETTIBONE 'BROLLY.

N GREENWICH VILLAGE, which is the
interesting suburban colony that lies tucked
away behind the Jefferson Market clock -
tower, in the very heart of New York City,
you may still see rows of three-story red
brick houses, with low front-stoops and green
front-doors, each of which bears a shining brass
knocker and a neat silver-plate. It is harder to
gain admission to some of these houses than it
is to pass the portals of a Fifth Avenue million
aire; but if you could open one of those green
doors and enter, you would see just about what
you would see if you were in the house to the
right of it, or if you were in the house to the
left of it.

You would see before you a long narrow
hall, with oil-cloth on the floor, and the other
kind of oil-cloth — the shiny kind — on the stairs,
laid over a strip of stair-carpet. The walls are
painted, except a few that preserve the old-fash
ioned paper that imitates blocks of marble. Near
the foot of the stairs is the parlor door, narrow
and inhospitable, and generally closed on week
days. The parlor has a flowery Brussels carpet.
The Brussels is American Brussels, so the blinds
140

T (Lfa pettiboiK 'Broil?. ^

are shut most of the time. There is a very nar
row, gilt-framed pier-glass between the two front
windows. On the little white marble shelf below
it, stands, under a glass globe with chenille around
the bottom, a plate of wax fruit touched by the
hand of Death in 1864. On the mantel-piece
are a fancy clock in French bronze, with green
paint simulating verdigris in every depression, a
white cross entwined with ivy leaves in a material
resembling beet-sugar, and a stuffed bird. The
two-branch gas-fixture in the middle of the ceiling
is always done up in pink mosquito - net
ting, although a fly would starve to death in the
room. In the corner is a grand piano. The
last tune played on it was
"Tramp, tramp, tramp!"
On top of the piano, in
a round case of glass
and polished black wal
nut, is somebody's fu
neral wreath embalmed
in paraffine. Sometimes
the vigorous duster of
the mistress of the house
disturbs this ponderous
article, and, as its feet
grit on the piano-top,
a thin, hoarse murmur
comes from the dull strings
below. The whole room
smells old and cold and coffin-varnishy.

Back of this is a room which is dining-room,

drawing - room, living - room and sitting - room,

where there are bare places worn in the carpet in

front of the old folks' chairs; where there are

141

V «:i7abe in prance." V

geraniums in the windows, and a hyacinth-glass,
and bird-seed growing in a wet sponge; where of
Winter evenings the wife cuts out her dresses on
the black-walnut table, and the husband reads his
newspaper with his slippered feet on the base of
the stove.

In such a house as this lived Mr. and Mrs.
Obadiah Pettibone, a childless couple somewhat
past middle age. For thirty years Pettibone had
been a clerk in a large commission house down
town, and for twenty-nine of these thirty years he
and Mrs. Pettibone had lived together in what
might be called a sort of financial and economic
union, in which the wife was the active and domi
nating partner. They were married by the church
— their certificate hung framed in that cold front
parlor — but they were far more closely united by
their love of saving, which, in the woman's case,
came almost to a mania. To save the very
shadow of a cent was to her a religious duty ; and
that she could stand by her convictions every
tradesman in the ward knew by personal experi
ence. It was not a wasteful nor extravagant
neighborhood, but even its thrifty and frugal
denizens looked upon Mrs. Pettibone with dis
favor, as a woman who almost brought the cardi
nal virtue of economy into ill-repute.

It may be understood, therefore, that this
household was thrown into some disturbance
when Mr. Pettibone came home one day and
announced that he was going to replace the
seventy-five-cent cotton umbrella that he had
carried for four years by a five-dollar silk one —
and made this announcement with the sullen and
dogged manner whereby a henpecked man indi-
142

V £f?e Pettiboue 'Broil?. ^

cates to his wife that he has reached a point
where he is going to have his own way for once.

None the less did Mrs. Pettibone rave. She
could see at a glance that Pettibone's case was
absolutely sound and unassailable. The umbrella
was a shocking object. That it had brought

upon him the jeers of his fellow-clerks, and ex
posed him to ridicule, she did not greatly care;
but when she learned that the younger men of the
office had served formal notice on her husband
that if he re-appeared with that umbrella — and
carrying an umbrella was his life-long habit; he
would not have known what to do with a cane —
they would open a general subscription among
themselves and the clerks of other offices with
whom they had business relations, for the pur
pose of buying him a new one, and that the new
one must be of silk to cost not less than five
dollars — then Mrs. Pettibone understood that the
inevitable had to be faced. For, such a scandal
143

^ "Utabe in prance." 'V

downtown might bring his penuriousness, or
rather her penuriousness, to the ears of his
employers, and endanger his position. And
although, after twenty-nine years of saving, the
Pettibones owned the house they lived in, and
two or three others, they would have regarded
the loss of the husband's stipend an affliction
hardly to be borne.

It was Saturday afternoon when the blow
fell, and, until the evening meal was concluded,
Mrs. Pettibone scolded and harangued, and be
wailed her lot. She tried in roundabout ways
of feminine ingenuity to fix upon her husband
the blame for the situation. At last she remem
bered that when they had bought the seventy-
five-cent umbrella he had preferred one at eighty-
nine cents; and she berated him soundly for not
having insisted upon its purchase. A man, she
said, was expected to know about umbrellas. If
he knew that this other one was so much better,
why did he not tell her so and get it, like a man ?
But no; he wanted, as usual, to throw all the
responsibility upon her shoulders, so that he could
have her to blame if anything went wrong. If he
had got the better umbrella, it would have worn
well and would not have excited the attention of
the other clerks; and this disgrace and expense
would not have been brought upon them. It was
just like him.

And therewith her soul was satisfied, and
she put on her best bonnet and the black lace
shawl that she wore for state; and they marched
out into the night, to make of the buying of the
five-dollar umbrella a solemn and, as it were, a
monumental occasion.

IF £f?e Pettibone 'Brolly. ^

Through Bleecker Street they went, not that
they meant to commit any such folly as the invest
ment of five dollars in any umbrella to be found
in that motley thoroughfare; but because Mrs.
Pettibone wished to begin in an atmosphere of
one -dollar -and -ninety -seven -cent silk umbrellas
and work her courage gradually up to the stick-
ing-point.

Then to Sixth Avenue they betook them
selves, where the elevated railroad plied its
roaring, flashing shuttles back and forth over their
heads, weaving dividends for Murray Hill; where
the great arc -lights sputtered and hissed and
crackled as they spread their unsteady, dancing
glare over the shop-fronts; where crowds jostled
them, where girls winked at the old man, and
street venders thrust children's toys in his wife's
face, crying:

" Buy one, lady ; buy one for the baby ! "

It was in Eighth Avenue at last, in an
"Emporium" famous for its "bargains" in every
variety of goods, from stove-lifters to ladies' hats,
that, just as the store was closing, as the lights
were going out, and the tired clerks were covering
the counters with long strips of cotton cloth, that
Mrs. Pettibone bought an umbrella for four
dollars and ninety-eight cents; thereby saving her
pride, and acquiring an article that would pass
muster with the connaisseurs of Pettibone's office.

When Pettibone returned from downtown on
Monday evening, his wife met him at the door.
It was a habit she had, founded not so much on
145

V "ITCabe in prance." V

warm affection as on a desire to satisfy herself
that he was all there, as a mother examines the
condition in which a child returns from school.

" I don't wonder you wear out your um
brellas, if you fold them like that," said she,

PL.

taking it, and carefully opening it. Then she
stood aghast, pointing one skinny finger at a little
circular brown-edged hole near the centre of the
hemisphere. She gazed, her eyes burning with a
solemn indignation, upon her bald-headed, pale-
faced, wrinkled husband; who stood before her,
clad in lirnp creased broadcloth, swaying a little
from side to side with the feebleness of a man
grown aged in sedentary toil.

"Obadiah," she said, in a dreadful voice,
" you 've been making a circus clown of yourself,
and showing 6ff before those fellows in the 'office,
and you 've ruined your umbrella ! Well, as
you 've made your bed, so you shall lie."

It was of no use for Pettibone to protest and
vow that he had let nobody touch the umbrella,
146

~T (Lty Pettibonc 'Brolly.

except the person appointed by his tormentors to
see that it came up to specifications. It took
Mrs. Pettibone three hours that evening to darn
that hole, not with silk, but with cotton, carefully
and pitilessly chosen not to match. Part of the
time, of course, she was telling Pettibone what she
thought of him.

But the next evening when she
opened the umbrella, she stood as
though a thunder-bolt had fallen
at her feet. Pettibone was ex
onerated; but the umbrella was
ruined. On the inside of every
fold were a dozen or more tiny
perforations which, when the
umbrella was fully opened, com
bined to form an intricate pat
tern — a sort of impromptu
Hamburg edging design. Not
the most malicious mind could
have connected Pettibone with
such a design, nor with the in
strument with which it was made — for the smell
of cigarette-smoke mingled easily and naturally
with the smell of burnt silk.

"We might cover it — " began Mr. Pettibone.

" Cover ! " said Mrs. Pettibone. She simply
repeated the word; but the way in which she
repeated it clearly conveyed the idea that her
husband had proposed to cover the umbrella with
pink silk at $12.00 a yard and to inlay the ribs
with diamonds.

The strongest tyrant sometimes goes too far,
and it is very often upon a point that might well
have been yielded.

a 147

^ "2Ha6e in prance." ^

" Then I '11 have another umbrella ! " said
Pettibone.

He had another umbrella. The battle raged
all the evening, and ended in a compromise. He
was to buy one more umbrella; and he was to get
special permission to place it, during office hours,
in the private closet of the senior partner — a spot
where it would have been sacrilege and discharge
to touch it. So on the morrow he left the house
early; and with no ceremony at all, but with the
hurried, brazen, cowardly-desperate manner of a
man who finds himself forced into doing a shame
ful thing, he bought another $4.98 umbrella just
as the Eighth Avenue Emporium was opened and
the yawning clerks were uncovering the counters.

A care-worn theatre treasurer once stopped,
with a tin box in his hand, at the door of the
manager's office, and pointed to the open doors
of the auditorium, as he addressed a friend.

"Do you see that red fire in there?" he
said, " and them ruins tumbling down, and that
corpse going off the stage a-top of four Romans ?
The audience thinks that 's the end of the tragedy.
Well, 't ain't. Wait till I go in and tell the old
man there was only a hundred and twenty-two
dollars in the house. That will be the end of
the tragedy."

Mr. Pettibone might well walk off down
town with his new umbrella in his hand and his
struggle and agony behind him. But Mrs. Petti
bone — what of Mrs. Pettibone, left alone in the
house with the corpse of the murdered umbrella
— the elder and original silk umbrella of the
house of Pettibone ? If she looked at it once
that morning, she looked at it a score of times.
14$

V^ (Efc Pettibonc '

When she was not looking at it, it was not wholly
out of her mind. It stood to her for $4.98 dead
loss; and the $4.98 she had taken from the
treasury for the purchase of the second umbrella
had brought to her as yet no visible return, so
that that sum seemed to her as clear a waste as
the other. Thus regarded, the ghastly object
before her became in a sense the wreck of a
$9.96 umbrella; and the contemplation of this
simply disgraceful extravagance, taking a concrete
and tangible form right here in her own house
hold, tortured her almost as a mother's heart is
tortured when a child goes hopelessly astray.

She felt so badly that in order to make her
self feel worse she went into her front parlor; but
there, before its gloom could fairly penetrate her
system, something occurred to her that made her
drop into a chair "all of a tremble," as she after
ward said.

Her eye had fallen upon the new velvet
carpet rug in front of her, whereon a yellow tiger
slew a brown deer with great wickedness. It lay
before the Franklin-heater, and replaced one that
two years before had been damaged by a fire in
the chimney.

How came it that she had not before thought
of the Insurance Company ? The Insurance Com
pany had paid for the rug — why should it not
pay for the umbrella? When she got over her
first nervous trembling, she resolved that the In
surance Company should pay for the umbrella.
She had done a great deal of hard thinking in the
ten minutes that she had sat on the uncomfortable
little satin chair in the chilly parlor, but she had
made up her mind. She had determined to go

I4Q

herself to the Insurance Company and to collect
the cost of that umbrella. Why should she go by
herself? Because she knew that her husband
would not like it ; that he would not go himself
— nay, more, that he might once again put his
masculine foot down, and prevent her going if he
knew of it. How did she know this, having no
knowledge whatever of the subject, nor having
conversed thereon with her husband. I do not
know. But there is a good deal of instinctive
knowledge of that sort dodging around between
the confidences and the reserves of married life.

It was this knowledge and the accompanying
feeling of guilt that made her timorous at heart —
150

V £f?e Pettibonc 'Broil?. Tk

the more timorous that, like many another Ninth
Ward house-wife, she never stirred beyond her
own narrow neighborhood, save to make a few
necessary purchases or to see a parade. Therefore
she dressed herself in her very best, including a
bonnet that was built in the days when people
knew what a bonnet was; and she made a de
cidedly imposing figure as she set forth, with a
good dignified space — a generation, at least —
between her attire and the frivolity of the present
fashion.

Still, she was somewhat intimidated when she
stood at last before the big marble front of the
solid, old-fashioned building that housed the vast
offices of the Birmingham, Leeds & West Riding
Assurance Company, Limited, in a dark and
much crowded street far downtown. She stood
long on the sidewalk, looking through the plate-
glass windows at the long rows of gas-lit desks
and gilded gratings. At last she entered and in
quired of a uniformed boy where she could see
"the principal." The boy was American — the
only American thing in- that great office filled with
Britons and sodden in Briticism. He looked
sharply at Mrs. Pettibone for a moment, then
he said :

" General Manager, ma'am ? Mr. Thumble-
field ? Yes, ma'am. This way, ma'm."

Perhaps Mr. Thumblefield had left word
that he expected his aunt that morning; perhaps
the clerks were awed by Mrs. Pettibone's stately
and antique port ; perhaps the boy did not belong
to the Assurance Company, and was only trading
on his knowledge of its ways in a spirit of sinful
American levity — somehow Mrs. Pettibone was

V "ITCabe in prance." V

rushed through various corridors and passages,
and suddenly found herself a little out of breath
in a gas-lit room, upholstered in pleasant-smelling
leather, dark of hue and old-looking; where a
large man with a ruddy face and beard of mixed
gray and red, who sat in a large chair at a large
desk, asked her politely but with evident surprise
to take a seat. Two other large men with much
the same general appearance stood near him with

their hats in their hands. The man at the desk
added politely to Mrs. Pettibone as she sat down :
" One moment, madam, and I am at your
service." Then he continued, turning to the
other two large men: "Well, gentlemen, I'm
afraid that 's the best we can do for you. We '11
pay the $75,000, of course — or $85,000 —
which is it? — Yes, $85,000. The $11,000
claim Pratt will let you know about. That '11

V <Ef?e Pettibone 'Brolly ^

be all right, I suppose?" Here the other two
men nodded in a mattei-of-course way. "But as
to the $72,000 claim, the Company absolutely
refuses to pay you one cent of it under that
policy or any other that we '11 ever draw."

"Well," said one of the others, meditatively,
thrusting his hands into his pockets, " I supposed
that was about the position you 'd take; I sup
pose we '11 have to carry it up."

" Oh, yes," said the other of the visitors,
nodding his head assentingly ; " I always said it
was a matter for the Court of Appeals."

" Fancy so," said the man at the desk ;
"they '11 settle it. Just as well have these mat
ters settled once for all. When will you get up
to see that new pair of mine, Picklesby ? "

" Oh, I dunno," said Mr. Picklesby. " Fancy
I '11 get up with Rowbotham toward the end of
the week. Come along, Whilkington ! " And
with three grunts of British geniality, they bade
each other good-by, and Mrs. Pettibone was left
alone with the General Manager of the Birming
ham, Leeds & West Riding Assurance Company,
Limited.

Mrs. Pettibone was frightened; but you
would never have known it from the tone of
her determined voice or the expression of her
stern features.

" I want you to look at that," she said,
thrusting the umbrella at the General Manager
in the manner in which she might have called the
attention of a dirty boy to the thumb-marks he
was making on her clean front door.

Mr. Thumbleneld took the umbrella in frank
amazement, and mechanically opened it.

153

V "Iftabe in prance." V

"What do you think of that?" demanded
Mrs. Pettibone.

The General Manager looked at it inside
and out. What he saw was — not an umbrella
perforated with cigarette-burns, but an umbrella
that had sustained a much more serious, extensive
and yet far less symmetrical internal conflagration.
In fact the ravages of the flames could no longer
boast any artistic merit. They presented merely
an accidental appearance.

"Ah, well," said Mr. Thumblefield, clearly
taken back, "I should say that I rather thought
that it was by way of being in very hard luck,
don't you know ! "

"It 's burnt," said Mrs. Pettibone.

The General Manager of the Assurance
Company again gave the umbrella his careful con
sideration ; then he rolled it up and handed it
back to Mrs. Pettibone, stolidly remarking:

" So I should have supposed."

"It cost me $9.96," Mrs. Pettibone went on.
The General Manager again took the umbrella
from her hands and again he examined it.

" Very remarkable ! " he said. " Never should
have thought it;" and he once more returned the
umbrella to its owner.

"You '11 admit that it 's burned," said Mrs.
Pettibone, with irritation in her tone.

"Bless my soul!" said Mr. Thumblefield;
" really, my dear madam, I have nothing to deny
or to admit about your umbrella. I can't see that
it 's any conceivable business of mine."

"Oh, ain't it?" his visitor cried; "ain't we
insured in this, company of yours, my husband
and me ? "

154

V dfc Pettibcme 'Broil?. ^T

" Really I don't know," said the General
Manager ; " are you ? "

"Yes; indeed, we are," announced bis
visitor. "My name 's Pettibone, Mrs. Obadiah
Pettibone. Now, may be you '11 remember some
thing about it ! And you paid us one loss when
the chimney caught fire two years ago in January,
— you paid us forty-seven dollars — I remember
it just as if it was yesterday. Yes; and we had

one fire since then. Did more 'n twenty dollars
damage; and Mr. Pettibone, he never came near
here nor said a word about it to you."

The General Manager leaned back in his
chair and smiled.

" Is n't it a little odd, madam," he said,
"that Mr. Thingumbob — your husband, and you,
should leave a twenty dollars loss uncollected and
come here with a claim of less than half that
amount ? "

" Not a bit," Mrs. Pettibone snapped back
at him; "because my husband 's a fool, you don't
think I am, do you? He pays for his own

V "2Ha6e in prance." V

chimneys, but umbrellas come out of my house
keeping money."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" said the General
Manager, taken still further aback.

Mrs. Pettibone sat up straight and looked
him right in the eyes.

"Yes, sir," she said; "that's///^/ it." She
was not at. all frightened now. The joy of combat
was awakened within her.

Mr. Thumbleneld leaned back in his chair,
rather at a loss for words.

" Well, madam," he said at last, "I — I — I
don't really see what we can do for this unfor
tunate umbrella of yours. Very sorry, of course — "

" Well," said Mrs. Pettibone, " I want that
you should either pay me the price of it or give
me another one like it ; or else," she added hastily,
observing a look of unaffected amazement on that
open British countenance, "have it re-covered,
anyway."

Mr. Thumbleneld fairly gasped. " But, Great
Heavens, my dear woman, we 're not umbrella-
makers, don't you see ! You can't really expect
us to mend your umbrella for you, don't you
know!"

" All right," said Mrs. Pettibone readily ;
"give me the money and I '11 have it re-covered
myself. I could get it done, I suppose, just, as
cheap as you could. There 's a man does cover
ing right around the corner from our house — I
ain't never been to him, but they say he 's real
reasonable. And there is a man comes through
our street in a red-white-and-blue wagon some
times, and you supply the silk — but I suppose
it 's no use waiting for him — "

Pcttibonc 'Broil?. Tk

" 'Pon my word, madam — this is the most
extraordinary case I ever heard of. Why, madam,
we can't consent to enter into any such trans
actions. Why, the next thing you '11 be coming
here, you know, if your husband burns the soles
of his shoes- at the fire. Really, you know, we
can't do it, we can't do it ! We can't pay you for
accidents that happen to all that sort of
rubbish, you know!"

"'Rubbish!" shrilled Mrs. Petti-
bone, her eyes sparkling with anger;
"then where 's the good of your
precious fire insurance, I 'd like to
know? Rubbish! An umbrella that
cost most ten dollars! Rubbish! It
was n't rubbish when you wanted us
to pay for the insurance on it, but
now when it 's burnt and ruined and
Mr. Pettibone going to the office with
a -seventy-five cent umbrella in his hand
— never before in his life did he do such
a thing ! — Now ! — Now it 's rubbish ! Oh, I
knew it right well ; I 've known it all along. I
said to Mr. Pettibone, when he first went into
your company, * I know how it '11 come out,' I
says; 'I know just how it '11 come out!''

Mr. Thumblefield belonged to that large
class of Englishmen who believe, on general
principles, that women are made to be jumped
on; but who are perfectly willing to accept the
fact, in any particular case, that that woman,
individually, is not made to be jumped on. He
glanced out of his doorway and saw a long line
of people waiting at the clerk's desk where his
present visitor should have been stopped. He

y "ZUabt in prance." V

made a mental calculation of the value of his lost
time for that morning, and a mental memorandum
to speak to that clerk. Then he said wearily :

"Very well, madam, I '11 see what I can do
for you. How did this accident happen ? Of
course, if it was in the street — "

"If it was in the street, what then?" de
manded Mrs. Pettibone.

"Why of course we can't pay for it if it
happened anywhere out of the house."

"But did n't I tell you it happened in the
house?" answered Mrs. Pettibone, without the
loss of an instant. She was all herself now, for
she knew that victory was at hand. "But I
thought I 'd told you how it happened. You see
it was this-a-way. You see, Mr. Pettibone, he 's
real careful about his umbrellas; and he don't
hardly ever set 'em in the hat-rack where people
who come to the house might put their things —
no, he just takes his umbrella into the dining-
room, and puts it right up against the mantelpiece,
where the zinc is, where it will drip into the
cuspidor. Now, t' other day he brought home a
little kind of a thing to hold matches. It was
made of china, hand-painted, and it was a real
pretty thing; but he couldn't get it to hang real
straight. You know the way they make those
fancy things nowadays. Well, Mr. Pettibone, he
hung it right over where he puts his umbrella, and
I told him he 'd ought to have hung it somewhere
else. 'Obadiah,' says I, 'can't you see that that
thing 's tiddle-y ? ' But Mr. Pettibone, he 's just
like a man. He was all for having it right there.
Would n't any other place suit him. 'It '11 be all
right, Maria,' says he; 'don't you fret.' 'I ain't

V* (Lf?e Pettibone 'Broil?. TF

frettin', Obadiah,' says I ; ' but you '11 see,' I says,
says I; 'you need n't tell me] says I to him;
'you '11 see what your precious match-box will
bring us to — ' "

" Will you come to the point, Mrs. a-ah —
Pettibone?" said the General Manager
in a choking voice.

" That 's just where I was
a-comin','' pursued Mrs. Petti
bone, cheerily. "Well, it was
n't three nights after that —
no, not three nights — when
Mr. Pettibone came in, just as
it was getting towards dusk;
and I was out that afternoon,
and so I had n't got the light
lit; and Mr. Pettibone, he went
groping around the way a man does, all thumbs,
and he struck three, may be four matches. He
says he don't remember rightly how many he did
strike, and the first thing you know he had that
match-box down and the matches all over the
floor. And then he picked it up and put the
matches back; and he was bound he was n't
going to say a word to me about it. Oh, my !
he thought he was going to be dreadful smart,
just like a man all over. But I had n't more
than got my head inside the house than I says
to him : ' Obadiah,' I says, ' I smell smoke.' And
he tried to convince me that I did n't; but, my
gracious! he could n't any more convince me
when I know a thing than if he had n't 'a' been
there. And I says to him, I says — "

" Madam," said the General Manager of the
Birmingham, Leeds & West Riding Assurance

in prance." V

Company, Limited, fixing an apoplectic eye on
Mrs. Pettibone, " will you have the kindness to
have this umbrella re-covered at our expense, and
send the bill here ? The Cashier will see to the
matter, if this card is presented to him — imme
diately''1

Mrs. Pettibone walked to the head of Wall
Street. She did not get out at any of the streets
leading to Greenwich Village, but continued on
to where the great thoroughfare sweeps into the
bright and spacious cheerfulness of Madison
Square. There she selected an umbrella shop
of a grandeur to her liking. Therein she en
tered.

" I want to have this umbrella covered," she
said, "with the very best silk you Ve got in the
store. Expense is no object whatever."

She left the clerk gazing dumbly at the
wreck of a $4.98 umbrella, of a kind strange to
his eyes.

" Why," said Mrs. Pettibone to her husband
that evening, "it was as easy as anything; he
seemed real glad to give it to me. But there!
it 's no use talking to you!"

ibo

THE JOKE ON M. PEPTONNEAU.

THE JOKE ON M. PEPTONNEAU.

T PRECISELY half-past five o'clock
every afternoon, except Sundays, M.
Peptonneau descended the stairs
of the editorial office of the Cour-
rier Meridional, buttoning up his
long black frock coat, drawing on
his cotton gloves, and setting his
napless but still respectable old chim
ney-pot hat straight upon his head; to
perform which office he used both hands
with all the dignity and deliberation of a monarch
adjusting his crown. M. Peptonneau had old
hands, gnarled and twisted with many years of
pen-holding. When he left the office he looked
neither to the right nor to the left of him, and
if by chance he returned the rare salutation of
a friend, it was absent-mindedly, almost mechanic
ally, as we bow when, in some foreign hotel, we
become sufficiently familiar with a few faces to
pick them out of the crowd of strangers.

Straight before him went M. Peptonneau,
with his green silk umbrella under his arm, down
the long provincial boulevard, so thronged at this
hour that if it had not been for the loud Southern
voices and the broad Southern shoulders in their
162

It Peptonneau. "V"

loosely fitting Southern coats, you would almost
have said you were in some unfamiliar corner of
Paris. At the corner of the public square he
turned to the left and crossed the old stone bridge
over the rushing and noisy little river. Reach
ing the other side, he traversed a region of |&f
narrow, dark water-side streets, going past ilSr
the silent fronts of great stone warehouses,
with all their windows closed and barred,
past malodorous tallow chandleries, past
ships, supply stores, smelling pleasantly
of oakum and pitch, and past black
coal-yards, where an offensive, acrid dust
floated out upon the air, causing the
eyes to smart, and choking the lungs
with a flavor of illuminating gas.

Soon began to appear the shops of
the transpontine quarter where M. Pep- ^
tonneau lived — humble establishments that
supplied the daily needs and the occasional luxu
ries of people of narrow means and homely tastes.
These places transacted much of their business
upon the sidewalk, and their front doors stood al
ways open. The evening wind, which blew their
flickering gaslights to and fro, carried along the
whole street a slight odor of garlic. At one or two
of the more prosperous of these places M. Pep
tonneau stopped to make a few modest purchases
— tripe, headcheese, and a little can of American
oysters. At each place he called the shop-keeper
pleasantly by his Christian name, and was ans
wered with a respectful "Good-evening M. Pep
tonneau," which showed that he was a person of
consideration in the quarter. When he had fin
ished his business he walked on, carrying his

^T "lltabe in prance.** V

purchases to his home, a comfortable apartment
three flights up, over a tailor-shop of a rather
more imposing character than most of the stores
in the neighborhood, where he dwelt with Madame
Peptonneau. They had been married forty years,
and had one married daughter. They were both
eminently respectable, M. Peptonneau forming the
head of the professional society of the suburb,
which, otherwise, consisted of the doctor, the
notary, and a retired professor of heraldry. They
were known to be thrifty, and were reported well-
to-do, even rich.

M. Peptonneau united in himself the profes
sions of journalist, scientist and agriculturist. Yet
he would have been as puzzled to indite the most
commonplace of editorial articles as to write a
racy and sensational feuilleton; he knew no more
of electricity or dynamics than he knew about
astronomy or anatomy, which was absolutely
nothing at all; and he had never had a spade in
his hands in all his life of sixty years. It was his
function, let us explain, to conduct the department
of Agricultural Chemistry, Scientific Viticulture
and Riparian Hygiene in the columns of that
well-established and influential journal, the Cour-
rier Meridional, where he discoursed learnedly of
nitrites and nitrates, and phosphites and phos
phates, whose acquaintance he made in Govern
ment reports, and the works of other scientists
like himself. While this labor did not call for the
exercise of imagination or rhetorical brilliancy, it
called for a man of industry, accuracy and appli
cation; and for one fully capable of taking him
self seriously and manipulating the inorganic
elements with zeal, if not with enthusiasm.

r(>4

e on 2tt. peptonncau.

. -«=^

It is the good fortune of kingdoms that they
are born presumably respectable and inferentially
permanent. With the most logically constructed
of new republics, however, the inference and pre
sumption are both the
other way. Thus it
comes to pass that the
respectabilization of a
new republic is often
a matter of much con
cern to its promoters;
and frequently offers
an opportunity to a
humble and needy pa
triot to utilize a modest
stock of personal virtue
and solidity which, under

the less anxious conditions of a monarchy, would
probably be of no value except to the owner.

"The Joke on M. Peptonneau" originated at
a time when the Republic was far from being
firmly established, under an Executive that has
long since gone to join the only majority that can
be absolutely relied upon. This Executive was in
want of an official organ — not in want of an
organ, by any means, for it had organs enough to
bewilder the wisest of administrations with con
tradictory counsels — but of an organ that might
justly be termed "official" in the most intimate
and discreet sense of the word — a newspaper
that could utter delicate hints, ingeniously make
forecasts, and suggest tentative measures in a non
committal way. In fact, this particular Executive
wanted a faithful and experienced journalistic
butler to exercise discretion at its front door; and

V "ITTa&e in prance." V

it had pitched upon that standard old provincial
journal, the Courrier Meridional in preference to
any of the more brilliant but less trustworthy
Parisian prints.

Thus did a lifetime of respectability serve a
very good and very stupid old journal; and M.
Peptonneau, who shared in the prosperity of his
paper, was in himself a worthy reflection of the
tastes and ideas of the institution he served.

It was not generally known, however, that
the editorials of the Courrier, so sage, so sonorous,
so discreet, were written by an assemblage of
feather-brained young men whose only ambition
in life was to make enough money to go to Paris
and live the life of the Parisian dandies and
loungers.

It was these young people who put up " The
Joke on M. Peptonneau." One morning as he
passed through the general room of the office, on
the way to his own private and personal den, he
passed by a group of these youngsters, who
were discussing the approaching festival of the
Fourteenth of July, when, in the chief city of the
Department, the great and popular Prime Minis
ter, himself a native of the county, was to make a
great speech in which, it was privately understood,
he had engaged himself to intimate that for a
specimen and example of a free press serving as
a bulwark to an enlightened government, he could
not do better than to point to the Courrier
Meridional, that etcetera of etcetera, an illustrious
etcetera in the etcetera of etcetera.

This would be the first public announcement
of the Courrier 's officially — a fact, for the rest,
sufficiently well known to all its unsuccessful rivals.
ibb

" Say, Papa Peptonneau," said Hector de
Longueville, an easy-going, good-natured young
man, who wrote leading articles of uncompromis
ing severity, "we shall have you with us on the
Fourteenth, shall we not ? "

« I think not," said the old man, good-
naturedly; "not unless you want to get me a new
coat six weeks before my time."

It was a tradition of the office that M.
Peptonneau got a new coat twice a year, on the
first of March and on the first of September. His
good-humored allusion to the fact rather threw
the laugh against Hector, who endeavored to
retrieve himself.

question of a coat, M.
'it is a matter of uniform

"But this is no
Peptonneau," he said;
this time."

" Of uniform ? "
vaguely troubled.

repeated the old man,

767

IT "ZTTabe in prance." V

"Why certainly," said the young man; "of
uniform." And he turned to his companions:
"Have you not told M. Peptonneau that we go
to the festival in uniform ? " he said to the sport
ing editor, M. Paul Chantal, a young man who
wore whiskers and tried to look like an English
man. He was an inveterate jester, and he caught
at the idea at once.

"I thought he knew it," he said indifferently;
"it has been talked about enough. Did not you
tell M. Peptonneau, Gontran?" he said, turning
to the third of the three inseparables, as the
younger members of the Conrrier staff were called.
This was M. Gontran de Kerouec, a tall, dark
young man with a pointed beard who had already
published a book on political economy, and who
was suspected of entertaining serious political
aspirations. Kerouec frowned slightly, not wholly
relishing the jest.

"Ah," said Chantal quickly, as if in explana
tion of his comrade's manner, "Gontran does not
want to talk about the uniforms. He does not
like them; he thinks they are not in good taste.
In fact, he made quite a time about it, did you
not, Gontran? — and went to the Chief and
objected."

To be invited to take part in a joke on
another person is to be flattered almost as subtly
and effectively as by the imputation of having a
pretty woman in love with you. Kerouec had too
much personal dignity to permit him to approve
unreservedly of the practical joke either in the
abstract or in the concrete. But he felt that his
histrionic powers, which were really fine, had
been called upon, and that in loyalty to his

ft>8

on

comrades he must join them in mystifying the old
man. He got off the table on which he had been
sitting, and began to walk away, with the air of a
man who declines longer to continue an un
pleasant subject of conversation.

" To my mind," he said, " it is in the worst
of taste, and will reflect no credit upon us either
as journalists or as Republicans. However, I
have said what I had to say, and it has been
disregarded. Let that end the matter."

"But what — ," began M. Peptonneau,
amazed and puzzled ; "I do not understand."

"Why," said de Longueville, "it is just
simply this : M. Lecadi has got a notion in his
head which is insane enough; but I suppose we
must yield to it. He is determined that, being
the official journal of the Government, we shall
all go to the Festival on the Fourteenth of July
in a uniform designed for the purpose, just as
though we were soldiers or sailors employed by
the Government. Now, do you understand?"

" Impossible ! " cried the old man, indig
nantly. " The Government would never sanction
such a piece of foolishness ! "

" But it seems they have," said Gontran de
Kerouec, yawning listlessly as he paused at the
door of his private office ; " and you will have to
put on your tri-colored coat, Papa Peptonneau,
like all the rest of us, or — "

And he made a gesture, suggesting a sudden
and rapid fall, that in the office of the Courrier
Meridional, which was situated at the top of five
flights of stairs, had long been used to signify dis
missal from service. Then he disappeared, closing
the door after him.

769

V "Utabe in prance." V

With the end of avoiding any further ex
planations, de Longueville and Chantal made
haste to follow his example.

"We must be off," said the latter; "we go to
press half -an -hour earlier than
usual to-night; the railroad
service is so delayed by the
preparation for the Four
teenth that we can no
longer send our papers
by the last train. It 's
stupid, all the same," he
concluded, hurrying his
companion off the scene;
while M. Peptonneau,
with an air of anxious
despondency, went to
his desk. He wrote all
day, but with a troubled
brow, and when, at
nightfall, he left the
office, he had written only
three-quarters of a column,

instead of the column-and-a-quarter, which the
printers were used to expecting from him.

The joke had an immediate and assured suc
cess. In the language of the young men, M. Pep
tonneau had "bitten," and, once having bitten, he
held on with an amazing tenacity, swallowing the
bait with hardly a gulp. It never seemed to
occur to him to doubt the monstrous absurdity;
having once accepted the idea that rational and

170

V <Ef?e 3oh* on HI peptonncau. V"

respectable men of letters could be confronted
with the possibility of a humiliation so grotesque,
he seefned to find nothing incredible in the ex
travagances and exaggerations which the three
young men invented for his benefit with an un
bounded ingenuity. By degrees, too, they let the
whole office into their joke, which everybody
found highly amusing.

Everywhere that M. Peptonneau went in the
office of the Courricr he was the centre of a con
spiracy both malicious and mischievous ; and by a
hundred clever bits of acting, all apparently spon
taneous and unforced, the old man was deluded
into believing that, in obedience to a crazy whim
of the proprietor of the paper, M. Lecadi, every
member of the staff, in both the business and edit
orial offices, was to go to the approaching fes
tivities attired in a livery designed to indicate
them as government employees. It would have
been difficult, indeed, for him not to be con
vinced, with fresh evidence confronting him at
every turn. Here he would come upon a couple
of clerks indignantly discussing the supposed situa
tion in furtive whispers; and calculating the pos
sibilities of retaining their places should they dis
obey the tyrannical edict. Then he would hear
one of the poorer employees deploring the neces
sity of paying sixty-five francs for a costume that
could be worn but one day and must thereafter be
useless. « If it were for a masked ball, even ! "
the man would mutter dolefully; and M. Pep
tonneau felt his heart-strings drawn at the thought
that his ridiculous uniform must cost him good
money, besides fastening upon him a degrading
affront.

171

y- "ITTabe in prance." ^

One day Hector de Longueville, who had
some skill in drawing, led him into the publisher's
private office during the temporary absence of
M. Lecadi, and showed him, carelessly thrown
among a pile of loose papers, a colored sketch
scribbled over with pencil notes, marked, "Design
for Professional Uniform, ordered by M. Lecadi."
It presented a hideous, fantastic costume, with top-
boots, pipe-clay belt and a broad-brimmed felt
hat with a plume, something between the dress of
a Tyrolese Jdger and an English groom. M. Pep-
tonneau accepted this monstrous creation without
a doubt.

« But I can not wear it," he said; "it is im
possible. No ; never in my life could I wear such
a thing as that ! "

He had told his wife of the uniform, and she

had received the news with disgust and anger.

When he told of the boots and the belt and the

plumed hat, she exploded in a fury of abuse and

172

V" £f?e 3oKe on HI. Pcptonneau. V

reproach, and called him a spiritless slave; while,
on the other hand, if he ventured to hint of giving
up his position, she accused him of taking the
bread out of her mouth and of wishing to rob his
daughter's children. On the whole, M. Pep-
tonneau had a hard time of it; and he could not
even seek distraction in work, for at all hours the
figure of himself clothed in that pitiful and fan
tastic costume came between him and his nitrates
and phosphates. The series of papers which he
was writing on "The Relation of Odor to the
Strength of Artificial Fertilizers " was hopelessly
ruined ; most of the papers lacking, as he himself
said, his usual fire and spirit.

The joke shortly began to assume such
dimensions that it became advisable for the con
spirators to let the heads of the establishment into
their scheme, lest the mysterious whisperings and
hole-and-corner confidences should suggest to
their employers the existence of a disloyal intrigue.
The literary head of the paper, M. Riboulet, was
a serious man; a political enthusiast who firmly
believed that in the propagation of the ideas to
which he subscribed lay the only hope of the
country's continued existence. He listened to
what Chantal told him, with a vague and absent-
minded expression on his long, melancholy face;
and forced a smile as if he were humoring a
prattling child. Then he dismissed the matter
from his mind altogether.

With M. Lecadi, the publisher, it was an
other affair altogether. He was a great strapping
173

in prance." V

Norman, with a big stomach, a round face, a
bristling beard and a laugh deep, sonorous and
hearty. When he heard of the joke on M. Pep-
tonneau, he slapped his fat thighs and shook with
irrepressible mirth until the tears coursed down
his red cheeks.

" Old daddy Peptonneau in a plumed hat ! "
he cried, shaking like a mould of jelly; /'oh, but
it is delicious, my children, delicious ! "

And when at last M. Peptonneau, driven to
desperation by the furious reproaches of his wife,
came to the private office of M. Lecadi, and with

a pallid face said, "M. Lecadi, I have come to
tell you that I can not wear your uniform," the
sturdy publisher of the Courrier Meridional was so
convulsed with suppressed merriment that de
Longueville, who was present, thought he would
have an apoplectic fit. But M. Lecadi was some
what of a joker himself, and he loved nothing
174

V' £f?e 3oHe on HI. Peptonnecw. *f

better than to play a good trick on his serious and
sober-minded editor. He recovered himself, and
said:

"You will not wear the uniform, M. Pepton-
neau; the project has been given up. It was
only a wild idea of M. Riboulet. His patriotism
is somewhat fantastic, you know. I have con
vinced him that, for men of the world, his notion
is impracticable. There will be no uniform."

" I am very glad to hear it," said M. Pepton-
neau, feebly, wiping the cold moisture from his
brow with his old red pocket-handkerchief. "I
myself had thought it would have been indeco
rous — yes, I may say it — indecorous."

A good joke is said to last long. Sometimes,
too, it goes far. While M. Peptonneau and his
wife were thanking Heaven that they had been
spared from an imminent and terrible danger, the
story of his mystification was being whispered
around the town in a score of incomplete and
incorrect versions, which did not grow more vera
cious as they passed from mouth to mouth.

The next week, le High-Life, a ribald little
paper popular among the Parisian men-about-
town, contained the following paragraph :

'•CURIOUS PRODUCT OF PROVINCIAL TASTE.— We
learn on good authority that the editor of a certain provincial
journal, the character and length of whose editorial articles
have earned for it the nick-name of ' The Night-Cap,' has con
ceived the brilliant idea of sending all his employees, clerks,
reporters, sub-editors and contributors, male and female, to the
festival of the Fourteenth, gorgeously arrayed in a uniform of
his own designing, (founded, it is said, on fashions of the

^ "XlTabc in prance." ^

Sixteenth century,) and carrying battle axes. The scheme was
probably suggested by the fact that the paper in question has
for some time past been cherishing a hope, as ridiculous as it
is vain, of being selected as the official organ of the government.
Fancy a provincial official organ — and in uniform at that! "

Within another week a half-a-dozen Parisian
and a half- a -hundred provincial journals had
repeated the story, in various phases of error and
exaggeration. A polite stranger, subsequently
identified as a gentleman in the employ of the
Government, called upon Madame Peptonneau
while her husband was at the office, ostensibly to
inquire into the character of a servant; and be
guiled that estimable lady, who was nothing if not
loquacious, into talking at considerable length.
Two days later, M. Lecadi and M. Riboulet were
summoned to Paris by a very curt and unpleasant

communication from the Minister of Public
Affairs, and received a decided intimation that
their presence at the ceremony of the Fourteenth,
in or out of uniform, would be regarded as im
proper and offensive; and that the Courrier
776

V (the 3ohe on lit. Peptonncau. 1P

Meridional would do well to suppress for the fu
ture any political tendencies. In the great speech
which the popular Prime Minister delivered on
the Fourteenth of July, his references to the Free
Press serving as a bulwark to an enlightened
government were coupled with the name of a
well-known Parisian journal; and about the same
time three brilliant young provincial journalists
found their time at their own disposal.

It is said that the only person in the town
who never heard of "The Joke on M. Pepton-
neau" is M. Peptonneau himself.

FATHER DOMINICK'S CONVERT.

FATHER DOMINICK'S CONVERT.

HE MAN is a divil!" said Father
Dominick, of the parish of Ste. Anne
of Guigneguiche.

Father Dominick was on his
way homeward, but he was not fac
ing the homeward way. He had
turned full around, and stood, his
hands folded on his fat, round stom-
^ ach, his brows knit in a perplexed
% and angry scowl, and his eyes fixed on
the last house of the village he had started
to leave behind him. It was a low, shabby struc
ture of unpainted boards, set a little off the
highway among weeds and rubbish and ash-heaps,
with that air of utter and hopeless shiftlessness
about it which a really worthless French Canadian
knows so well how to impart to his domicile.
Half of the lettering on the sign over the door
had been effaced by wind and rain, but enough
remained to tell you the name of the occupant,
and it was easy to guess that his business was the
sale of liquors. From this building came, every
now and then, bursts of that heavy, gross, offen
sive cachinnation, that forced, mirthless bellowing
which is as near as boorish drunkards ever get to

180

£>omtntcks Concert. V

honest, mirthful laughter. At each recurrence of
the unpleasant sound, the Father's scowl grew
deeper; and in the intervals he listened intently.
A single voice was speaking from the house. At
last, urged by some tribute of guffaws louder than
usual, it rose to sudden loudness and rang out
upon the still evening air so that it was clearly
audible across the road — Father Dorninick's
own voice, round, full, Irish, individual, unmis
takable, chanting within the pot-house "/;/ saecula
saeculo-o-oriun . ' '

Father Dorninick's grip tightened on his big
oaken stick and he struck its iron ferule angrily
on the ground. Then he swung around and
marched on up the rocky road that led to
his home, near where the rushing river,
emerging from the pines, started on its
tumbling descent of half-a-mile of roar
ing white cascades.

"The man 's a divil!" he re
peated.

Ten years of life in a little,
old-fashioned backwoods town in the
province of Quebec had taught Father
Dominick many things — how to be
masterful and how to be wily, how
to be diplomatic and how to be severe;
but it had not taught him how to over
come the last traces of one of the prettiest brogues
that ever came out of Ireland, and when the good
Father was excited or emphatic it came out in all
its native sweetness. So it was that you always
heard Father Dorninick's brogue when he had
occasion to speak of Michel Gargaroux, car
penter, joiner and atheist, the enemy of society,

i8r

y "ITCabe in prance." V

as Father Dominick loved to call him; for was
he not the enemy of Father Dominick and of
the Church?

The race of French Canadian habitants has
produced some eminently unlovely types, and
when you meet the sulky, brutal, rude, ignorant,
idle, discontented lump of greasy, sallow flesh
with a little black scrap of moustache in the
middle of its face, that loafs all day long about
the railroad stations of the larger towns, you are
rashly but naturally inclined to think that you
have encountered the most unlovely of these; but
if you go further, you will be apt to find that
human nature is reserving some of her surprises
for you, as usual. When for two or three genera
tions nature has bred into this type Scotch
shrewdness, Irish humor and Yankee smartness,
all thriving on a base of habitant immorality, or
rather unmorality, you have another type that is
as much more dangerous and ill-disposed as it is
more complicated and interesting. This was the
type of Michel Gargaroux, leader of the Anti-
Clerical party and King of the Boors in the parish
of Ste. Anne; and it may explain why he gave
Father Dominick more trouble than all the rest
of his parishioners put together.

There had been a time, no doubt, when
Michel Gargaroux, carpenter, joiner, etc., was a
good Catholic; but it was a time beyond the
memory of any dweller in Guigneguiche, and it
must have been co-incident with a time which
Gargaroux sometimes spoke of when he was a
little under the influence of liquor — the time
when he was young, good-looking and a favorite
with the ladies. One thing is certain, it was a
182

^ 5a%* DomtnicKs Concert. ^

time long past. Every village is supposed to have
its atheist, who generally attains his position partly
by accident and partly by intention, beginning by
being a shade more liberal-minded than his fel
lows, then being goaded by persecution into an
open scepticism, and passing from this stage to
rank atheism just for the notoriety of the thing:
to get at least a sort of left-handed fame out of
an inevitable and unpleasant singularity. But no
town in the world ever possessed a local atheist
of more active and effective malignity than Michel
Gargaroux. He was immensely popular, princi
pally, of course, among the bad men of the town;
but he also held the more respectable folks by his
wit, which was sharp, according to habitant stand
ards, and by his excellent skill as a workman.
Indeed, he was a carpenter and joiner for Guigne-
guiche to be proud of, but most of all his "pull"
with the people was founded upon his really
extraordinary powers of mimicry; and of all his
much-admired imitations of prominent citizens, by
long odds the best was his unapproachable repro
duction of Father Dominick conducting the
services of Holy Church. The impious roared
thereat, and even the decently shocked devout
could rarely refrain from acknowledging its truth
to nature by an ill-restrained smile, or, worse yet,
by a convulsive chuckle or giggle — according to
sex. Father Dominick had heard of this interest
ing impersonation, but as he was not in the way
of attending Mr. Gargaroux's exhibitions, he had
had no opportunity of passing critical judgement
on it, until the day when the evening breeze
wafted it across the road to him from the tavern
windows. It was hardly to be expected that the

9*9

TT "ZTtabe in prance." V

humor of the performance would fully appeal to
the good Father, though he had no lack of an
Irishman's best gift. What he thought of its
artistic merit may be inferred from his single
remark.

Three hours later, as he sipped his modest
night-cap of native wine, the good Father put his
slippered foot down on his worn old carpet with
the action of a man who has taken a serious and
important resolution.

"This thing," said he, "has got to end. I '11
go to morrow!"

And on the morrow it was announced that
Father Dominick was going to Quebec to kiss the
hand of the Archbishop, and that some great,
strange and mysterious thing was to come of his
sudden visit.

Father Dominick departed, Father Dominick
returned. He arrived between nine and ten at
night. It took Elise, his old housekeeper, the
length of time that it takes a woman to throw a
shawl over her head and run to the gate — it
took Elise that much time to start the news fly
ing around the village, passing from house to
house just before the closing of the shutters, that
the Church of Ste. Anne of Guigneguiche was to
be refitted throughout with new pews, new rails,
new paneling, and new brackets for the holy
images along the walls. People sat up late that
night in the village, and by the morning the news
had been thoroughly digested and one particular
result of its reception had become apparent to

V 5atf?er' Dominicks (£onr>ert. V

even the dullest wit; and all Guigneguiche was
a-chuckle, saving only one solitary citizen.

Michel Gargaroux did not chuckle. Silent
and sour, with a worried look in his little gray

eyes, he worked at his bench all day long. When
he was alone his brows were puckered in troubled
thought. He smoothed out the pucker when
people came to see him, but it gathered itself
again as soon as they left. All day long his
friends paid him pleasant little calls.

" Hi, Miche, busy with the church job,
hey?"

" Say, Miche, I heard there was a priest
lookin' for you."

" C'est done difficile, Miche, c't ouvrage au
Bon Dieu, hein?"

" Say, Micky, folks is sayin' there 's heaps
of money in them pews."

This last was from a Maine Yankee who had
once got ahead of him in a horse-trade. It was
wormwood and distilled gall.
185

All day long he worked and thought. That
night he did not show himself at the tavern.
Nevertheless he got wind of the rumor that was
freely discussed there, that the big envelope which
had arrived for the priest in the morning's mail
was from a firm of cabinet-makers in Quebec,
and contained plans and proposals for the reno
vation of the church. There were many such
rumors as this, and, somehow, Gargaroux heard
them all, in spite of the fact that he worked
steadily at his bench all day long and had no
idle time for his old companions. But the rumor
that came to him like a stab in the breast was
an elusive, untraceable word that went hither and
thither without responsible paternity, saying that
M. le Cure held it a scandal to the town that it
should be necessary to confide such a sacred
work to the hands of a stranger. Then came the
weekly paper, with the news printed in all the

V 5atfc* Domintcfe Concert. V

convincing assurance of black type, that the Arch
bishop had ordered the refitting of the church of
Ste. Anne of Guigneguiche at a cost to the dio
cese of not to exceed six hundred dollars, and
that His Grace had added to this liberal appro
priation a generous contribution from his private
purse. Michel Gargaroux chewed on that, as
our country folks say, for the space of one bright
August morning; and then, when
noon came, he took off his
apron, brushed his trousers
with some care, put on
his black coat, and the
hat which he kept on a
peg behind the door, and
walked off to the church
of Ste. Anne, which stood
at the cross-road near the
bridge that crossed the
river just below the falls.

It was not a large or im
posing edifice, but it looked larger that day to
Michel Gargaroux than it had ever looked be
fore. He knew the building well, inside and out,
although he had never entered its doors in alt the
years of his residence in Guigneguiche, for he
passed it twice a day on his way to and from
work, and its broad doors were open all day
long in fair weather. There was a Home for
Consumptives near the town, and at almost any
hour some emaciated figure might be seen kneel
ing before a favorite saint chosen from among the
long row on either wall to be the repository of
prayers late and vain. The rude brackets which
supported the gayly painted images were decked
187

^ "2rtabe in prance." V

with poor, pious baubles, relics of the grateful
dead, pitiful gifts of those who went away believ
ing themselves cured.

Michel Gargaroux could not have told you
the name of one saint, nor could he have made a
guess at the number of the Stations of the Cross;
but in his furtive glimpses through the open door
he had taken in all that interested him in that
interior, with the eye of a carpenter and joiner.
There were eleven pews on a side downstairs, six
long ones on each side gallery, and four little ones
in the organ-loft — so he had been told; he had
never seen the organ-loft, as it was directly over
the door. In all, in various parts of the church,
there were, as he put it, "nigh a hundred and
twelve foot of rail, twenty-two plain sash, and
three fancy, and more 'n three hundred foot of
cornish."

He knew that he should find Father Domi-
nick at the church, for his friends kindly kept him
informed of every movement of the head of the
clerical party, and he knew that the Father was
decorating the church for the approaching feast
of the town's patron saint. Doffing his hat, Gar
garoux entered into the solemn silence of the
temple, and stood blinking in the streams of
faintly opalescent light that poured in from both
rows of windows, for the dusty roads around the
church reflected the strong sunlight from every
direction. At the further end of the church
Father Dominick was directing two old women
from the Consumptive's Home, who were draping
the altar with strips of gold-fringed velvet. Gar
garoux felt both confused and awed by the
strange silence and coolness, the unfamiliar illu-

188

mination and the hushed voices of the servants
of religion ; but he marched resolutely up to the
priest and said with a bow :

"Good morning, your Reverence."

The priest's back was toward him. Father
Dominick turned his head, but so slightly that
Gargaroux could not tell whether or no he were
recognized, and responded in preoccupied tones :

" Good morning, good morning, sir. Put
the festoon to the left, Mrs. Mercier — the gold
tawssel goes on Mrs. O'Reilly's end of the rail —
— is that straight now? — just a trifle bey and.
Thank you, ma'am."

Gargaroux felt a great desolation spreading
about him, a cold, bleak desolation, with a sensa
tion of creeping paralysis in the centre of it where
he stood. He tried again :

" Decoratin' — " her, he was going to say,
but checked himself in time — " the church ? " he
finished.

•V "IHabe in prance." ^

The priest appeared to regard the question
as both trivial and unnecessary.

" Ste. Anne's Day is Choosda'," he returned
in a tone of seemingly unconscious rebuke.

" That 's so, that 's so," said Gargaroux, as
if he had some doubts about it, but was yielding
admiringly to convincing argument.

Then the great waste space around him grew
wider and bleaker, and wrapt itself in a chilly
twilight. He tried to speak; but a distance of
several miles already separated him from the
priest with the uninviting back, and the further
that silent desert spread around him, the drier
grew the roof of his mouth. Awkwardly and
uncertainly he turned to go, and came in face
of the organ-loft, which he had not yet seen. It
contained a suprise for him.

Four pews! He had been misinformed.
There were six, and no little ones either, and
the organ-case ! And the screen and rail in front
of the singers, and one — two — three — four
brackets, and two great carved corbels that were
absolutely dropping to pieces, and would have to
be replaced ! Gargaroux's courage came back to
him in a feverish flood.

"Your Reverence," he blurted out, turning
back in desperation.

" Well, sir ? " returned the priest, indifferently.
"Lave the wrinkle, Mrs. O'Reilly; 't is fine as
it is."

Gargaroux forced it out; and it came like a
pellet out of a pop-gun.

" I come for the job."

"What job?" asked the priest, absent-mind
edly. .

^ $atf?er I)omintcks Concert. "V

No, he did not say "what job." What he
dropped over his shoulder sounded like this:
"//////7tv//#/JOB?" all in one word with the accent
on the "job." This is one way that an Irishman
has of picking up his end of a bargain which he
intends to make a hard one for you. You come
to him with a proposition, and it is his plan of
campaign first to reject it as preposterous and
finally to accept it — on his own terms. Father
Dominick put Gargaroux through the whole sys
tem. His first question was really no more, ap
parently, than a mere mechanical and unconscious
repetition of a strange sound that had fallen upon
his ears. If you were on a jcat-boat in a tempest,
and a man should propose to play you a game
of billiards; if your own brother would walk up
to you and say, " My name is Julius Caesar, and
I am a mulatto," even so you might repeat in a
dazed sort of way, "billiards?" or "mulatto?"

Gargaroux felt the blood rising in his cheeks.

" This job," he said, faintly.

" This job ? " repeated the Father.

This time he said the word as though he
took intellectual cognizance of it, and recognized
it as an English vocable, but could not at all
understand how it could have any possible appli
cation to anything within the range of his own
personal knowledge. His face wore a blank,
searching look, as though he were saying to him
self "job ? job ? Perhaps there is some meaning
of the word with which I am acquainted ? Perhaps
this man's dog's name is 'Job,' and he 's got
under the Church and he wants to get it out?
Perhaps 'I come for the job' is the pass- word of
one of his heathenish secret societies ? "

I '9!

V "lltabe in prance." V

Then as Gargaroux murmured the words
again still more faintly, he inclined his ear a little,
as one might to a child, and said in a tone of
stately indulgence :

"You must explain your meaning, Mr. Gar
garoux. I do not think I understand — "

"Why," said Gargaroux, brokenly, conscious
of a red face; "I mean this job, this here job,
this here renovation, or renxing or whatever you
call it, of this here church."

This time Father Dominick understood. His
eyes opened to their widest, he drew up his mas
sive form to its full height, he crossed his strong
arms on his broad breast and he looked down on
the poor, little jackal of a man before him.

"My Church!" he said. "You! I wonder,
Gargaroux, that you dare take that holy name
into your mouth. Is it you, an atheist, a blas
phemer and a black inimy of Holy Church, would
lay your impious hands on this sacred edifish !
HHHWHAT would the Archbishop say to me if
I were to permit it? I believe, on my sowl I
believe, that if I were to allow such a profanation
he would call me to Quebec and shame me before
the whole population in front of the Cathedral at
noonday."

He turned majestically toward the two
women, as being the only portion of his auditory
capable of understanding the horrors of the situa
tion. The two poor creatures were quite suffi
ciently impressed : their faces were white, and their
fingers actually trembled; and one of them got
behind a screen and crossed herself nine times in
succession. It took the Father a good half-
minute of hard breathing to recover from his burst

/Q2

V $atfyt Dominicks Concert. V

of indignant surprise. Then, shaking his head
slowly and sadly, he said, in the tone of a gener
ous but resigned and hopeless martyr :

"No, Gargaroux, no! I do not reproach
you for the trouble and disgrace you have been
to me in the past; but I had not dreamed that
you would have the audacity and the foolishness

— the plain foolishness, man : it 's a born fool
you must be to be thinking of it — to come here
with such a request. Is it not scandal enough,
that such work as this, such ixtinsive and impor
tant work should have to go outside of the parish
because the only joiner in the town is an infidel
and atheist, blaspheming the God who gave him
the skill to earn his living? — and I 'm not deny
ing, Gargaroux, that ye 're the best workman at
your thrade betune here and Quebec."

During this speech Gargaroux
had stood nervously shuffling his
feet, twisting and turning his
hat in his great knobby hands,
clumsy at touching anything
save the keen tools of his craft,
but his eyes were fixed upon
the paneling, and certain men
tal calculations that he made
almost involuntarily gave him
the courage of desperation.

"Oh, come now, Father" he
said, hanging his head; "atheist

— infidel — them 's hard words."

" Do you deny, Gargaroux," demanded
Father Dominick, " that you are an atheist ? "

" Why — well — I may 'a' bin something of
an atheist at one time, but — no — I ain't never
193

ytjf

^ "Utabe in prance." V

been — well, not what you might call a bigoted
atheist."

The priest shook his head with an unsatisfied
air. As he did so he put his hand out against the
base of the pulpit as if he were about to lean
against it. It trembled a little, and he drew back
his hand, and then, reaching out again, tried it
carelessly, casting his eye up and down as if he
were taking note of its unsteadiness; and, all in a
mechanical sort of way, as though his attention
was mainly to the conversation on hand, he gave
the pulpit a little dismissing slap that said per
fectly plainly, " Well, well, that
old thing 's got to go, too."
No, no," said Father
Dominick; " Garga-
roux, I 'm afraid I
can't hope — "

"Well, now, I
don't see why you
can't," said Garga-
: roux, with new deter
mination ; " you ain't
heard only one side;
may be I ain't the
kind of man you think
I am. How 'd it be
now if I was quite a
different sort of man from
what you think ? "

" It would be very different, indeed, Gar-
garoux," said Father Dominick, in a mild, regret
ful way; "and I wish with all my heart that it
were so. But if you are really at heart the man
you say you are — "

194-

+£ ^atfycr -Dominicfe Concert. V

"Well, I am, I am," interrupted Gargaroux;
then he added cautiously, "to some extent."

"Or perhaps I should say," said the priest
sternly, "if you were such a man — "

"Well, I be," broke in Gargaroux; "when
you come right down to it, I be."

" If you were," continued the priest, " you
would not hesitate to give the Church a proof
that you are worthy of her confidence."

" Well, now, that 's fair," said Gargaroux,
eagerly; "I told you we 'd get along better
than you thought, when we got right down to
business."

"A proof," Father Dominick went on, "that
would conclusively establish your fitness for such
a highly important undertaking; not in my un
worthy eyes alone, but in the eyes of the whole
parish."

"Well — say — " returned the joiner, "what
do you call a proof, anyhow ? I 'm willin' to do
what ?s right, of course; but I don't want to be
made no monkey of."

"Well," said the priest, calmly and thought
fully, as though he addressed some one at a dis
tance, "you must of course communicate publicly,
and this very Sunday, without delay."

Gargaroux grew pale.

" Look here," he said at last in a sort of
gasp; "do them gallery pews go, too?"

"Yes," said Father Dominick gravely; "but,
of course, we should take our time about that.
There is a great deal of work here, Mr. Garga
roux, a great deal."

"Yes, yes," said Gargaroux; "and you want
it done right, too. You don't want no two

'4 r<)5

V "21Ta&c in prance." V

or three men foolin' with that and doin' it all
sorts of ways, so it won't look nohow when it is
done."

" No," said Father Dominick ; " I should
certainly much prefer to have one competent man
undertake the entire business. But this is wandher-
ing from the subject. Important as the renovation
of our church may be, it is nothing to the saving
of a human soul. Am I to expect to see you at
mass next Sunday?"

" Why, I s'pose so, I s'pose so, Father, if
you think so much of it. As I say, I ain't no
ways bigoted. Folks has different ways of lookin'
at them things, and if that 's your way — But I
say, next Sunday, you was sayin' ? Ain't that a
kind of sudden?"

But Father Dominick's tone had grown
severe again.

"Sudden?" he said; "no, Mr. Gargaroux.
I should call it tardy in the extreme. I trust that
you will not let any suggestion of delay awaken
suspicion of the ginuineness of the convictions
which you inform me you possess."

" Of course not," hastily returned Gargaroux ;
" I '11 be there, I '11 be there ! "

And the two poor consumptive ladies, be
coming conscious that they had witnessed a
miracle, dropped on their knees and clasped their
thin hands in silent benediction.

Father Dominick had the victory. Victory
and a feminine audience — what more could the
heart of man or priest desire? He could afford
to be good-natured, and he was.

"There, that 's the way to talk," he said,
with a cheerful good-fellowship, patting his con-

Domintcks Concert,

vert indulgently on the shoulder; "that 's the
sensible way to talk. It 's a man y' are now,
Michel Gargaroux, and I am sorry you ever were
anything else. And now, my man," he went on,
" I shall want to confess you — let me see — two
times, certain. It must be a long time since
you 've had a clearance."

Michel Gargaroux became conscious of a
new trouble.

" I 've got to be confessed, have I ? Where
will I go for that ? "

"There is the confessional," said the priest.

There was something of annoyance in his
tone, as he pointed to the dark corner of the
church where stood the little curtained cabinet.

"That there box?" said Gargaroux inquir
ingly. " Le 's see."

He walked the length of the building' to
examine the confessional; Father Dominick fol-

'97

IT "IKabe in prance." V

lowing him with a leisurely step. He shook the
confessional, rapped it with his knuckles and stuck
his thumb-nail into the soft wood.

"Why," he said, "that box ain't in no sort
of condition! It 's most comin' to pieces."

" 'T is old, perhaps," said Father Dominick;
" but, sure, it 's seen good service."

"It was n't never made right," remarked
Gargaroux, giving the frail structure a contemp
tuous jab with his thumb. "The man what made
that was n't no carpenter. He 'd better 'a' been
blacksmithing. Say, you don't want me to talk
to no such a box as that."

"Why not?" demanded Father Dominick.

" Oh, I could n't do it. T would set me
crazy to look at them bevels. I could n't talk
straight."

" I 'm thinking it 's annything but a straight
talk ye '11 be making, Gargaroux," said the
priest.

" Say, you let me off till I make you a new
box," suggested Gargaroux; "this here thing 's
spruce. Now I Tll tell you what I '11 do. I '11
make you one of oak, and I '11 make it good, like
it ought to be made. Is that satisfactory?"

The priest smiled.

" If the state of my confessional is a bar to
your devotional ardor, my friend," he said, " I '11
be aisy with ye. Suppose you come to my house
to-morrow at this hour ? "

Gargaroux's tone expressed a great relief.

"At your house?" he said. "Well, now,
that 's more like it ! There won't be nobody else
there, will there?" A furrow of anxiety came
between his brows.

198

^ 5atfycr Sominicks Concert. V

" None else," replied the priest encourag
ingly; "you and me and your sins, that 's all."

" It 's a bargain ! " cried Gargaroux, as he
grasped Father Dominick's hand; "and if you
don't go back on it 1 won't. Whoever does, his
name 's mud."

And he stalked out of the church with deter
mination in his tread.

At half-past twelve the
next day Michel Gargaroux
sat in Father Dominick's ar
bor by the riverside, where
old Elise had shown him,
acting on special orders, to
await the Father's coming.
Gargaroux felt a vague and
undefined satisfaction in this
choice of a place for his or
deal, as he surveyed the
scene around him. The vine-
clad Summer-house stood in
a pleasant angle of the low
rock -cliffs that bordered the
stream. Bushes of tree-honeysuckle surrounded
it on three sides; on the fourth, the rapid little
river rolled silently by, hurrying to its foamy fall
a few hundred yards beyond the priest's garden.
The course of the water curved a little in its
sharp descent, and, from where he sat, Garga
roux, looking down over the wooded hill-slope,
could catch delightful glimpses of white through
the deep green of the foliage. Far, far below,
799

^ "21Ta6c in prance." T?

at the very bottom of the falls, he could see the
little church that had been the scene of yester
day's spiritual conflict — the little church that had
somehow become the centre of the universe to
the half-breed French Canadian who sat in
Father Dominick's arbor waiting to be confessed.
Gargaroux was a clod; but this was a pleasant
and beautiful place, and, so far as a clod could
be, Gargaroux was conscious of it. And he was

fully alive to the fact that it was a place of
uncommon privacy and seclusion. But even
there, in such a spot, and with such soothing
influences around him, ten minutes of waiting set
Gargaroux to fidgeting uneasily on his wooden
bench.

"He takes his own time, by thunder!" the
convert murmured to himself. " He ain't never
worked by the day, that man."

A stir in the thicket behind him made him
turn.

" Oh, he 's comin' at last, is he?" he said as
he braced himself for the ordeal.

And then his heart jumped up in his breast
and turned suddenly cold as he saw the bushes

200

^ $atfyct Domtnicks Concert. V

part and the huge form of Father Dominick
appear — not the Father Dominick of every-day,
in his wrinkled, shiny old broad-cloth coat and
his broad black ribbed-silk vest with the grease-
spots on it; but Father Dominick grand and
majestic in the snow-white surplice of the church,
strange and solemn, with a serious look in his
eyes and an awful dignity in the straight line of
his firm-set mouth and the breadth of his big
clean-shaven chin.

Before this white immaculate vision, this uni
formed representative of a supernal power, the
reclaimed atheist was quite as awe-struck and
deferential as — well, as the priest had calculated
he would be. Indeed it required the good Father's
kindly affability to put him at all at his ease.

"Sit down, Gargaroux, sit down," said Father
Dominick; "why, man, nobody's going to eat
you! "

But Gargaroux had come to the dentist, and
now he wanted to have the tooth pulled as soon
as possible.

" If it 's all the same to you, Father," he
said; "I 'd ruther get this here job over right off."

" Very well, my son, very well," assented
Father Dominick as he placed upon the ground a
small object which he had been carrying in his
left hand half concealed by the folds of his vest
ments. It was a little hassock or cushion.

"Kneel down," said the priest.

Gargaroux drew back a step.

" Say," he began, " I did n't understand there
was no such business as that."

With stern and authoritative manner Father
Dominick rebuked him.

V "IHabe in prance." V

" 'T is on your sinful knees that you must
approach the throne of mercy. Lose no time —
you may be called for your sins while you 're
thinking about it. Down, man, and be thankful
that you 're let."

Gargaroux knelt.

" Repeat the Confiteor."

"The which?" demanded the penitent.

" Oh, the heathen ! " said the priest, shaking
his head ; « well, say it after me. Follow me
now, word for word."

And he began to repeat the brief prayer
with the addition of a few interjections designed
to meet the case of this particular case of peni
tence, such as :

" — 'to blessed Michael, the arch-angel,' —
I '11 warrant you never heard of him, did ye now ? "

^ Sattyt BomtnicKs Concert V

Or,

" — 'through your fault, through your fault,
through your most grievous fault ' — three times,
do ye mind that?"

When it was done he settled himself more
comfortably on his bench, crossed his legs, folded
his hands on his stomach, and said :

" Now proceed to your confession."

But Gargaroux had no idea what was
required of him; and he only knelt and stared
helplessly at the priest, with the look of a
badgered beast, until Father Dominick came to
his rescue.

" I see," he said ; " I see, you 've forgotten ;
that 's it, is it? Well, then, I '11 put you through
just a trifle of an examination as to the state of
your soul. We '11 try you on a few of the Com
mandments, to see how you stand. Now, take the
first — you know what that is ? "

"Why — I — " began Gargaroux; but the
priest did not wait for him to finish.

" Of course you do," he said cheerfully ;
" who would n't. Now, the interrogation you are
to ask of your conscience is this: 'Do you wholly
and entirely love your God, and more than anny-
thing else you know of?' '

"Why, you see," said Gargaroux, "it 's this
way. I ain't sayin' I ain't got no natural affec
tion. A man with a wife and four children ain't
got no right to say no such thing. Nor, you
understand, I ain't binding myself to anything as
a matter of business. I don't want to bring dol
lars and cents into this thing. But outside of
that, and reasonable like to any legitimate
extent — "

203

^T "UTabe in prance." V

" 'T won't do," said Father Dominick ; "you
must love Him more than annything in the
world."

"Well," returned Gargaroux, doubtfully, but
accommodatingly. "I '11 do my best."

" Now, let 's see ; I '11 not try you with the
whole ten at once, but just with a few, skipping
here and there like. For instance, 'Thou shalt
not steal' — how 's your conscience there?"

"I ain't no thief!" Gargaroux exclaimed,
indignantly.

" Sure you 're not," said the Father, in a
soothing voice ; " but that commandment has
more spread to it than you think. Have you
deviated in the slightest degree, by so much as a

hair's-breadth, from the paths of strict and abso
lute honesty?"

"Why, look here, Father," Gargaroux made
answer in a candid and confiding manner, " it 's

204

^ 5a^sr SominicKs Concert. V

just this way. I 'm an honest man, and I take a
pride in it. I don't care what other people think
about them things, I take a pride in it, and I ain't
ashamed to own it. But I don't believe in bein'
too derned fool honest. 'T ain't natural ; and if
people find it out they begin to take advantage
of it, don't you see? I ain't sayin' that I don't
pile it on just a leetle when I 've got a customer
I know can afford it — just an hour or two here,
or a few foot of stuff there — but never so as that
he 'd feel it. But I don't see nothing wrong in
that; do you? Not when you consider that a
man has a duty to his family; I don't."

" The misappropriation of a single cent con
stitutes an act of theft," said Father Dominick,
majestically. "Avoid the practice.- We '11 pass
on to another one : ' Remember the Sabbath day
to keep it holy.' "

"Well, I do, I do," said Gargaroux, stroking
his chin reflectively ; " when business is slack I
do. I ain't sayin' that when I 'm rushed — when
I 've got a job that ain't done Saturday night, and
has got to be ready Monday morning — that I
don't put a little work in Sundays; but I would n't
make no practice of it. And I always charge it
two days in the bill; so I guess there ain't no
harm in it."

" You must shut up your shop on Sunday,
Gargaroux," said the priest.

" I do, I do," the penitent cheerfully assured
him. "Keep her shet, always, street-front end.
Why, I 'd lose lots of your folks' trade if I
did n't."

" You must shut the other end."

Gargaroux looked surprised and doubtful
203

V "2Ua6c in prance." V

"Well," he said, at last, "I suppose I could
put in a skylight; I '11 think about it, anyway."

"Hmmf!" grunted Father Dominick; "to
proceed. Here is a commandment of greater im
portance to him who would live a truly Christian
life than most people understand. Have you, in
any way. shape or manner, borne false witness
against your neighbor ? "

Mr. Gargaroux's reception of this question
was amazing. He burst into a roar of laughter,
slapped his thighs, and writhed in mirthful enjoy
ment.

" Well, that beats all ! " he gasped and
chuckled ; " that beats all ! You 're a smart one,
Father; I 'm derned if you ain't. I knowed you

was making up them questions out of your head !
You was layin' for me right along, was ye?"

"Silence, man!" thundered the indignant
priest. " Cease your unseemly merriment, and
answer me ! "

zob

^ $atfyer -Dotttinicks Concert. ^

" Why I — I — I thought," faltered the
sobered and abashed Gargaroux, "that may be
the boys had been telling you that it was me
started that story about the new butcher being
driv' out of Montreal for sellin' goat for Spring-
lamb."

u I see, I see," said the Father, looking rather
hard at his convert; "you '11 have to be con
siderably more careful in the future."

"I will, I will," Gargaroux answered heartily.
" Lord, it ain't often they ketch me ! "

"Well," said the priest, "I '11 ask you one
question more and that '11 do for to-day. Have
you taken the name of the Lord in vain ? that is,
have you been guilty of blasphemy or profane
language ? "

"What! me?" asked Gargaroux, as if the
examination had hitherto concerned itself with
someone else. "Not me; no, sir; 1 'm no
swearin' man. I ain't saying that now and then,
when things don't go the right way, I don't say a
little more than I mean to — just a few cuss-
words like anybody might use — and I don't say
that when I am swearing I 'm so all-fired particu
lar how I do swear. But as for real what you
might call swearing — why, hell ! I ain't no
swearing man."

Michel Gargaroux is now a regular com
municant; and they say he made an extremely
good job of the church.

207

One of the special weekly attractions
of our humorous contemporary PUCK, is a
short story which does n't much resemble
short stones published elsewhere.

-MAVERICKS"

they have been called of late, and " Maver
icks " is the title of a pretty volume just
published, containing about twenty of them
by as many writers. Among the contribu
tors are W. J. Henderson, Brander Mat
thews, Madeline Bridges, George H. Jessop,
Tudor Jenks, Flavel S. Mines, R. K. Mun-
kittrick, and PUCK'S editor, Mr. Bunner,
whose " Short Sixes " formed the initial
volume of the series of which " Mavericks"
is the latest issue. To any one in search
of something which will make him laugh
this little book may be safely commended.
The pictures, of which there are many, are
quite as funny as the tales, and are all by
PUCK'S artists. — AT. r. //„•«/,/.

In Boards, $1.00. In Paper, 50 Cents.

All Booksellers.
By Mall, from the Publishers f on receipt of pi ice.

HALF-TRUE TALES.

" Half- True Tales ; Stories Founded
on Fiction," by C. H. Augur, forms a new
volume in PUCK'S series of short stories.
The stories are very lively, and all the
more effective because they leave some
thing to the imagination of the reader.
They are short, which is another thing
in their favor; and they are cleverly illus
trated by C. J. Taylor. The volume is

Charmingly printed.— The (London) Daily Chronide.

In Cloth, $1.00. In Paper, 50 Cents.

All Bookseller.';.
By Mail, from the Publishers, on receipt of price.

14 DAY USE

RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED

LOAN DEPT

b

Renewedtt- subject to immediaterecall.

.

l8ITar'65J

LD 2lA-60m-4,'64
(E4555slO)476B

General Library .
University of Californu
Berkeley

YB 7317?

925727

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY